Understanding Bot Activity in Email Analytics

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?

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 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.

What is Einstein Metrics Guard in Marketing Cloud Next Your email metrics are lying to you. Apple Mail's auto-opens, security scanners, and bots are inflating your open rates and skewing your analytics - making it impossible to measure true campaign performance. Einstein Metrics Guard fixes this by using AI to filter out fake engagement and show you what's actually happening with real humans. This deep-dive explains why bots and security scanners exist (spoiler: Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches emails), how Einstein uses time-series analysis and predictive models with confidence scores (0=bot, 100=human) to identify genuine engagement, and the simple toggle in Email Feature Settings to activate it. If you're making decisions based on email analytics, you need this feature enabled. Your A/B tests, automated journeys, and strategy depend on accurate data. https://lnkd.in/gnzd7JFE

My email got an open rate of 83% and CTR of 42% instead of usual 50% and 22%. What I found out next shocked me totally- I was thrilled and patting myself on my back only to be taken into deep shock when I started analysing what did I do right. I noticed my email platform (Brevo) has filters for "Apple Mail Privacy Protection" and "bot activity." I was unaware of them so clicked them out of curiosity. Real opens dropped to 39% and CTR of 1.14% ( 3.53% if we take open rate as the base). Only a few people have clicked on my link. That's a 60% inflation in my open rates. 😶🌫️ I had no idea Apple pre-loads emails and bots scan them, both counting as "opens." Have I been optimizing for a meaningless metric this whole time? My actual engagement rate is 3.6%, not the 83% open rate I thought I had. Now I'm deep-diving into the data: 📍 Analyzing click heatmaps - WHERE are those people clicking? 👥 Exporting emails of actual clickers - WHO are our true readers? 🎯 Planning remarketing campaigns - targeting ONLY engaged subscribers 🧹 Considering a list purge - do I remove the ones who never engage? 📊 Building segments - "clicked in 30 days" vs "ghosts" I feel like I've been marketing to phantoms. Apple pre-loads emails. Bots scan them. Both count as "opens." I've been fooled. Questions for my marketing network: What's your REAL open rate after filtering? Do you delete inactive subscribers or try to re-engage them? Which metrics actually matter in 2025? Has anyone cracked the code on improving click rates? Currently planning to A/B test everything, focus on clicks over opens, and maybe say goodbye to dead weight on my list. Am I overthinking this? Under-thinking it? Drop your brutal honesty below. 👇 #EmailMarketing #DataAnalytics #MarketingMetrics #DigitalMarketing #MarketingStrategy

I am not in #MarketingOps but this looks promising! 🔥 "Email - New Bot Open & Click Rate" 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐭? 📧 ↳ HubSpot is adding visibility on bot-included engagement Rates. On the email post-send page, HubSpot will now show open and click rates which both include and exclude recognizable bots. ↳ The bot-included rates may be similar to what some customers see in other marketing softwares which do not use bot filtering at all. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫? 💡 ↳ This helps provide a more reliable view of human interaction with your emails. ↳ HubSpot customers will now have a comparative view between bot-included and excluded rates, helping measure the real state of their email campaigns. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤? ⚙️ ↳ When bot filtering is on, the primary open and click rate excludes bot activity, showing the percentage of opens/clicks estimated to be made by humans. HubSpot believes these are more reliable metrics than those you may see from email service providers which do not filter bots. ↳ When bot filtering is off, the primary open/click rate includes bot activity. This is a less reliable metric but may be similar to how other marketing software which does not filter bots measures open/click rate. ↳ In each case, users will see both metrics. #hubspot  #revops  #hubspottipsandtricks

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

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.