How can I detect and segment bot clicks in email campaigns?

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that adding a 'blank' image at the top left of the email resulted in over 100 clicks, confirming bot activity in checking links and raises the question of how to adjust reporting to account for this.

Email marketer from Litmus shares that monitoring IP addresses for suspicious activity, such as a high volume of clicks from a single IP in a short period, can help detect bot clicks. You can then segment these IP addresses to prevent them from skewing your campaign metrics.

Email marketer from StackExchange shares that analyzing user agent data can reveal bots. Bots often use specific or outdated user agents. Segment users with suspicious user agent strings.

Email marketer from Neil Patel Digital explains that using honeypot traps, such as hidden fields or links, is an effective method to identify bots. Bots are more likely to interact with these traps, allowing you to segment and exclude them from your legitimate audience.

Email marketer from ActiveCampaign explains that employing a double opt-in process ensures that only genuine subscribers are added to your email list, reducing the likelihood of bot-generated clicks. This method requires new subscribers to confirm their subscription via a confirmation email.

Email marketer from Reddit explains that tracking the time between email delivery and link clicks can help identify bots. Bots often click links immediately or within a few seconds, which is uncharacteristic of human behavior. Segment users with unusually fast click times.

Email marketer from Email Geeks likens the blank image click tracking to the "hidden field" method for filtering bad signups, suggesting that anyone clicking the blank image link should be treated as a bot and excluded from regular click reporting.

Email marketer from ZeroBounce shares that using email verification tools to validate email addresses before sending campaigns helps to remove invalid or bot-created addresses. This reduces the chances of bot clicks and improves overall email deliverability.

Email marketer from EmailDrips explains that analysing engagement metrics such as click-to-open ratios and time spent viewing emails, can expose bot activity. Segmenting users with unusually high or low engagement scores can help isolate potential bots.

Expert from Word to the Wise responds that seed list placement allows for monitoring the inbox placement. This can show discrepancies between expected engagement and actual engagement, possibly identifying bot clicks if the engagement is unusually high on seed accounts.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests resizing the image to 1x1 to prevent accidental clicks from users dragging their mouse and noticing the pointer change.

Expert from Spam Resource explains that unexpected high click rates can be an indication of bot activity. They also mention some anti-spam systems can activate all links in an email to check for malicious content, resulting in artificial clicks.

Expert from Email Geeks explains that they define behaviors as "clickbot"-y, move those individuals into their own segment, and report only on the non-"clickbot"-y people, maintaining them in the segment until the behavior ceases.

Documentation from Cloudflare shares that implementing bot management tools can help detect and mitigate bot traffic. These tools use various techniques, such as behavioral analysis and challenge-response tests, to identify bots and prevent them from interacting with your email campaigns.

Documentation from Mailchimp responds that tracking signup sources is key. This helps identify if a large number of signups are coming from suspicious or unknown sources, which may indicate bot activity. You can then segment these signups for further scrutiny.

Documentation from Google reCAPTCHA explains that implementing reCAPTCHA on signup forms helps to prevent bots from subscribing to email lists. By verifying that a user is human, you can reduce the number of bot-generated clicks in your email campaigns.