Avoid bot-inflated email metrics

Ever looked at your email click data and thought "there's no way one person clicked my link 40 times"? You're probably right – they didn't. Those inflated click numbers are almost always bot clicks from security scanners, not super-engaged subscribers. Corporate email systems and providers like Microsoft automatically "click" every link to check for malware before the recipient even sees your email. Telltale signs you're looking at bot activity: → Clicks happening within seconds of delivery → Identical click counts across multiple contacts → Every single link clicked (not just one or two) → Unusually high numbers from a single person Before you reach out to that "highly engaged" contact, cross-reference with your website analytics to see who actually landed on your page. Email metrics are powerful – but only when you know what you're actually measuring. Pro tip: 1. Add an invisible link - usually white font - to your email and see how many clicks that gets. 2. See if your email platform allows you to exclude bots or Apple MPP.

Your newsletter's click rates might be inflated. And it's not your fault. Over the past two years, many of my clients started to notice something weird: Click rates were 5-10x higher than expected on certain links. Some saw exceptionally high clicks on nearly every link in their emails. The culprit? Security bots. As phishing attacks have skyrocketed (SlashNext reported that they increased by 703% in the second half of 2024!), email security platforms have ramped up their defenses. They click on links in emails to verify they're safe before they reach inboxes. To be clear: These are good bots that are keeping the inbox safe for all of us. But the side effect? Your click data is getting messy. If you're sending to business, .gov, or .edu addresses, you're far more likely to see inflated clicks. Omeda, one ESP, has seen months where 70%+ of clicks on newsletters are from bots. (If you're sending to non-work email addresses, like Gmail, the impact maybe be smaller.) So what should you do? 🔵 Talk to your ESP to see if they can filter out these bot clicks. If not, look to a tool like Glueletter (https://lnkd.in/eFPBeGAc) to filter out these clicks. (That’s what I’m using to filter out clicks for my newsletter.) 🔵 Be proactive with your advertisers. Make sure they know about bot behavior and ask them to share links with UTMs so they can track results on their end instead of relying 100% on your ESP’s data. 🔵 Set up proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to prove your emails are legitimate. (I’ve got an article walking through the steps her —> https://lnkd.in/eDMTrisH) Here's the silver lining: This is an opportunity to be transparent and build trust. The newsletter operators who proactively educate their partners about what's really happening will be miles ahead of their competitors. Email isn't broken — but you do need to stay on top of trends like this to make sure you (and your partners) understand what’s happening in the inbox. ——— 📷 That’s a screenshot of a Glueletter report on a recent Inbox Collective newsletter. On some of these links, bots were 8x more likely to click on a link than a human. But because I filtered out these bot clicks, I was able to see how my audience actually behaved.

Looking to filter bot traffic from analytics reports? Start with your email channel. Why email? Because it attracts a lot of hidden bot activity, inflating most metrics like CTR and on-site engagement. When you send your newsletter emails, major email providers automatically scan the links in your email for malicious content as soon as they hit users' inboxes. These scans don’t stop at the links in your email—they also follow and scan any links found on the pages those links lead to. As a result, a single link click could generate as many as 10 pageviews in your analytics. The challenge is that most of these bots don't reveal their identity. They mimic normal user behavior, using standard user agents and performing actions like scrolling through pages or clicking buttons. This makes it difficult for Google Analytics to filter them out automatically. So, how can you exclude this bot traffic? Since bots don’t label themselves, it can be challenging. Here are 2 approaches: 1- IP Blocking:  One of the most common sources of bot traffic is Microsoft Safe Links, luckily they provide a list of IP addresses used by Outlook 365. You can blacklist these IPs in your analytics reports. You could also find some of these IPs using your server logs or ask your developer for them. 2- Honeypot Trap: Another method is setting up a honeypot. A common technique involves adding a hidden link in your email footer that real users won’t click, but bots will. Any traffic associated with this link can be excluded from your reports, or even challenged with a CDN like Cloudflare. Do you use any different approach?

Many brands are making decisions based on fake email data (and don't know it).   Here's a simple Klaviyo setting that 90% of brands ignore:   Excluding bot interactions from attribution.   I've been implementing this across all my clients lately, and it's a best practice that most brands just... don't do.   Here's the problem:   Bots are clicking your emails and SMS messages.   Not real customers. Bots.   This inflates your attribution and makes you think email is performing better than it actually is.   Maybe it's competitors checking out your campaigns. Maybe it's automated tools crawling your content. Maybe it's spam filters testing links.   The fix is dead simple:   Go into Klaviyo attribution settings → exclude bot interactions from clicked email and SMS metrics.   That's it.   Now your revenue attribution reflects actual human behavior.   The difference might be small (1-2% in most cases, some as high as 5%), but the principle is huge:   Make decisions based on real data, not inflated metrics.   Your attribution should show you where real customers are actually engaging and buying.   If you're using Klaviyo and haven't done this yet, do it today.   It takes 30 seconds and gives you cleaner, more accurate performance data.

Your click rate is destroying your email data - and it's getting worse. If you're sending B2B emails and seeing 4-7% click-through rates, I have bad news: Your actual engagement is probably closer to 0.5-2%. The difference? Bots. You see, enterprise security tools are doing their job... Protecting organizations from malicious emails. But they're destroying your email data in the process. When you send an email to a B2B contact, their organization's security system: → Automatically triggers the open (this isn't new) → Clicks every single link in your email (this is the growing problem) → Sometimes even triggers unsubscribes What you think are real clicks is actually seeing bot activity. Which means you might be optimizing for the wrong metrics. You might be making strategic decisions based on artificial data. And most ESPs aren't equipped to handle this. A few are starting to report "potential bot activity," but: The methodology isn't transparent The data isn't actionable The problem keeps growing Meanwhile, you're: Misidentifying engaged subscribers Wasting budget on segments that don't actually engage Missing the real behavioral patterns in your list An entire email strategy is being built on compromised data. We developed a method to identify and segment bot traffic without suppressing real subscribers. Here's how it works: Build a custom email footer with this structure: To: [subscriber email] From: [business name] Business Address Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences Now here's the key: Make the colon in "To:" a hyperlink. Just the colon. → Link it anywhere (your website, privacy policy, the same link from your email body, etc.) → The bold, underline, and mask the styling of both "To:" and "From:" → Keep the clickable area as small as possible → Make it nearly impossible to accidentally click Why this works: Email providers can see it's a legitimate link (no red flags) Real humans won't click a single colon character Bots will click it automatically You can now track non-human interactions When someone clicks that colon link, we tag them as "possible bot/non-human interaction." Now, I don't recommend suppressing this list. Real subscribers are on it. They'll book calls. They'll make purchases. Their actual engagement is just hidden behind bot activity. Instead: Segment them out for cleaner reporting. Analyze bot-free data separately. Make strategic decisions based on verified human behavior. ----- In this week's Email OS newsletter, I'm breaking down five specific tactics to protect your list and get cleaner data - especially critical if you're in B2B. Subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/g9h83HNV ----- Have you noticed unusual click patterns in your B2B email campaigns? Drop a comment with what you're seeing - I'm curious how widespread this has become across different industries.

Exposing shady Klaviyo agency practices, part 2. Last time I made a post like this I got a few messages from angry agency owners whose clients sent them my post. They were doing shady stuff, and their clients found out. So here's another 😉 Brand operators, if you obsess over % of revenue attributed to Klaviyo, here’s what tends to happen when you work with an agency: 🚩 They’ll tweak your attribution windows (e.g. 5-day open, 5-day click) so Klaviyo gets more credit. They’ll count bot clicks/opens as revenue (more on that below). 🚩 They’ll send more emails and flows to trigger those bot interactions or to catch buyers already on a path to purchase. If an agency suggests a 20-email welcome flow or daily sends without testing... run. 🚩 They’ll push for higher discount code percentages. 🚩 If your TOF acquisition slows down and they’ve layered in the above tactics, your % of revenue from email might spike, while your actual revenue stays flat or declines. Here’s the thing: inbox providers are now auto-opening and clicking emails using bots to check for spam and fraud. Klaviyo often counts those interactions as real unless properly filtered. This is a major flaw, and the industry’s still catching up. Agencies are taking advantage of this grey area to screw over brands. I see it every day. Email has always been part art, part science. You need to track a few key metrics overtime, while also monitoring the look, feel and function of your emails. Ask qualitative questions like: - Are we educating people about our products in an interesting way? - Are emails arriving at the right moments in the customer journey? - Are we clearing our ads funnel regularly? - The list goes on. The combo of directional data and qualitative content reviews will tell you if you're truly headed in the right direction. When someone asks me on a discovery call, “What’s a good % of revenue from Klaviyo?”, what I really want to say is: Who cares? I usually try to explain all this, but it’s a lot for one call. At Bedford, we’re not chasing vanity metrics or short-term sales spikes. We’re building email programs that grow and evolve with your brand overtime. A lot of agency owners tell me I'm an idiot for leaking content like this. That I'm too virtuous and that growth at all costs is more important. I wonder what David Ogilvy would say to them 😉 If you want to work with a retention agency serious about long-term results, shoot me a DM or email.

Open rates are a complete vanity metric. I’m more convinced of this now than ever. Why? I recently sent out a marketing email to 1000s of recipients and noticed a 25% open rate just seconds after sending. What’s happening here? Did the 25% happen to be checking email at that exact moment? Are 25% of subs sitting on pins and needles for my next email masterpiece? I think not. What’s actually going on is almost certainly bots and filters. Those come in the following flavors: Tracking pixel refresh by security/Gmail proxies ↳ Gmail image proxy and Apple Privacy Protection auto-load images (aka those 1x1 pixels to track opens) as soon as emails are delivered. Corporate scanners and antivirus solutions ↳ Products like Mimecast sandbox every link and scan every pixel immediately to check for threats. Those checks register as opens and clicks. This is an easy one to detect by looking at opens—“Whoa! Satya Nadella just opened my email! Oh, wait… nvm.” What to do about it? In short, there’s not much to do to uncover your real open rate. HubSpot has bot filtering, which helps. We use HubSpot and have bot filtering turned on and still get that immediate 25% open rate, so obviously there’s bots or filtering tools still sneaking through. Instead of using open rates, we use the following metrics: 🌐 Site visits Most emails drive to our website. With Common Room, we can see who was sent an email, if they visited our site, which pages were visited, and how much time was spent. ✅ The actual intended conversion We send a good amount of emails that drive to a conversion event like a video view, RSVP for a webinar, filling out a survey, etc. Obvious point here, but it’s better to measure performance by the end objective instead of claiming a win on open rates. 🧪 Email performance formula Alan Harris, my email marketing guru, developed a formula that we used to measure email performance at Segment. I don’t recall the exact details, but it was something like the ratio of clicks to unsubscribes, and anything over 3:1 was considered pretty solid. Anywho, a proxy like this is not a bad idea if you want to get fancy with it.

Did you know your Klaviyo account is overreporting CTR & sales from bot clicks? Here's how to fix it 👇 1. Open Analytics & Click on Custom Reports 2. Tap on Create From Scratch 3. Select Single Metric & Chose "Click Email" as the metric 4. Click on "Add Filter" and change it to “Clicked Bot” and set it to “is false.” 5. Save the Report and now you'll only see real clicks in the report 6. If you need to analyze the data further, export the report. Click the “Export” button and choose your preferred format (CSV, Excel, etc.). 7. Cross-check with Campaign Data Go to the “Campaigns” tab. Select a specific campaign you want to analyze. Use the report you’ve created to cross-check the real clicks against the total clicks in the campaign. 8. Automate the Process To automate this process for future campaigns, set up a recurring report. Go to the “Reports” tab, select your saved report, and click on “Schedule Report.” Choose how often you want the report to be generated and emailed to you (daily, weekly, monthly). Hope this helps & now you're able to eliminate bot clicks

At Blade Commerce, we've seen open rates hit 40-50% on every campaign. Sounds amazing, right? Well, not so fast. 😅 The days when open rates were the gold standard for email success are long gone, thanks to iOS 15 and Apple Mail Privacy Protection. This update, rolled out back in October 2021, artificially inflated open rates by pre-downloading content and sending open signals back to providers like Klaviyo. 📈💌 So, should you still care about open rates? Not really. They no longer serve as a reliable measure of how effectively you're reaching your audience. But don't worry, there are still ways to use this metric to your advantage: 👉 Cull Your Email Lists: Identify unengaged users—those who haven’t opened an email in 30, 60, or 90 days. Suppress or sunset these contacts to improve your deliverability and sender reputation, ensuring your emails land in your subscribers' primary inbox. 📬✨ 👉 Create Exclusions for Campaigns: Exclude profiles from campaigns to avoid annoying your subscribers and save money by sending fewer emails to those less likely to engage. In Klaviyo, you can identify Apple’s MPP opens and build segments that aren't inflated by automatic opens. 🎯📊 Remember, it's all about quality over quantity. Focus on engaging the right people with the right message! 💡💬 #EmailMarketing #Klaviyo #MarketingTips