How does bot activity correlate with lower click rates in email marketing, and what are the potential solutions?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog shares that bots inflating click rates lead to skewed analytics and wasted resources. They recommend using advanced segmentation to target real users, monitoring engagement patterns, and implementing bot detection tools to maintain accurate data.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests the issue with Chinese ISPs indicates a potential bot sign-up problem. Recommends auditing entry points to the email system, implementing double opt-in, or securing forms with Cloudflare Managed Challenge, Cloudflare Turnstile, or rate limiting.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests the bot clicks might be influencing spam filters, leading to lower actual recipient clicks due to spam folding. Asks if opens are also lower.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that bot traffic can skew email marketing metrics, leading to inaccurate click-through rates. He suggests implementing CAPTCHAs, using double opt-in, and monitoring IP addresses to identify and filter out bot activity.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests that bot activity not only affects click rates but can also inflate open rates, leading to a false sense of engagement. They recommend using email verification services to identify and remove bot-generated leads.
Email marketer from StackExchange, recommends using honeypot fields (hidden fields that only bots fill in), CAPTCHAs, and email verification to prevent bot signups. They also suggest monitoring signup patterns for suspicious activity.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign Blog emphasizes that bot clicks lead to inaccurate engagement metrics and wasted resources. They recommend using ActiveCampaign's bot filtering features to automatically identify and remove bot-generated clicks, ensuring accurate reporting.
Email marketer from Litmus explains that bot clicks can negatively impact email deliverability and sender reputation. He advises marketers to use confirmed opt-in, regularly clean email lists, and analyze click patterns to identify and remove bot-generated clicks.
Email marketers from Marketing Over Coffee podcast discuss how bot traffic skews marketing analytics, including click-through rates and conversion rates. They suggest using bot detection tools and analyzing traffic patterns to filter out bot activity and gain accurate insights.
What the experts say2Expert opinions
Expert from SpamResource suggests using honeypots (email addresses that aren't advertised but are present on a website) to identify bots that scrape websites for email addresses. Addresses receiving emails are likely scraped and can be removed from the active email list.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that bot activity impacts deliverability and engagement metrics. She recommends implementing strict opt-in processes, monitoring subscriber behavior, and removing inactive or bot-like subscribers to improve overall email performance and maintain a healthy sender reputation.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Cloudflare explains that bot management tools can prevent automated bots from creating fake email accounts. They suggest using Cloudflare Bot Management to analyze traffic patterns, identify bots, and implement challenges to verify human users.
Documentation from Google reCAPTCHA explains that reCAPTCHA helps distinguish between humans and bots on forms. It reduces fraudulent activities, including bot signups, by presenting challenges that are easy for humans to solve but difficult for bots.
Documentation from Akamai explains how bot detection works using behavioural analysis and rate limiting. It allows companies to block bots, and identify malicious usage of websites.