When sending emails, there are times when some contacts may have inflated clicks where every link in the email has been clicked in a short period of time.
If this happens, it is likely a security bot clicking these links. These security email bots are designed to protect business and users from getting spam/malicious content in their inboxes by checking the email is safe by validating and checking the integrity of a potentially suspicious link within the email.
Unfortunately, this is not a new occurrence, and these bots are industry wide across all ESP’s, so is out of our control as it lies at the receiver end and not the sending end. This isn’t isolated to Force24 this will be across other email senders and will likely encounter the effects of server-clicks at some level.
However, there are a number of solutions to identify when a bot has clicked your link. Some of the potential solutions are as followed:
Smart List
You can add a hidden link in the emails which isn’t visible to the human eye. Then with the automated smart lists if this link is clicked, the contacts who clicked the link can be added into a list to check to exclude/investigate. This could potentially remove some legitimate contacts from list that could be engaging but their security has just checked the email when its incoming.
Safe Senders List
As your subscribers are the ones that have the security email bots to protect them from having spam in their inboxes, you can ask them to add you to their safe senders’ list either directly or included within the email.
In this way, your emails will get through their spam filter and land in their inbox, because you will be a trusted contact to the Email Service Provider (ESP). Also, as you are in your subscriber’s safe senders’ list your content will be considered safe so the bots will stop checking them.
We have another useful article on how to add hidden links like this to your emails here.
Lead Score Weighting
You could reduce lead score weighting for clicks and take web activity, Goal URLs as a higher weighted score for prospecting.
Check Data List Health
Sending to inactive or unengaged email addresses can harm your sender reputation. This can be deemed as bad practice for many reasons, but the main one is anti-spam filter are more likely to view you as suspicious sender. We would suggest engagement campaigns/journeys to ensure we are maximising all good practices so rather than sending to one list we can apply rules to those that are engaging and non engagers so we can set up different campaigns for the audiences (rather than just email the data, when all skewed together).
Own links to Website.
Try linking only to content on your own website. Receiving email servers often prefer links in the email that match you domain in the sending address. When you include a link to another domain, you’re essentially putting your trust in their domain reputation, rather than yours.