Please note: This feature is still in the beta-testing stage. Further updates will be made to this as we receive feedback from platform users.


Glossary


What is NHI?

NHI stands for 'non-human interaction'. We categorise this as an activity or behaviour from a contact that is not deemed to be genuine. For example, This may be translated or viewed in the platform as multiple clicks within the same second or an activity coming from a bot IP.


Whilst not all bots are bad and don't always indicate poor sending behaviour, bot activity can cause inflated vanity metrics (opens and clicks) leading to a mislead marketing and/or sales team as well as an overly inflated lead score. For example, bot activity in emails can be used as a way to prevent and/or identify links to malware or phishing attempts from entering an inbox through security clicking email links.


How is the bot activity identified?

Bot activity is generally identified as being inflated click and/or open metrics. In emails, bot activity usually involves security software positioned in front of a recipient's inbox. This security software opens the email and often interacts with some or all of the links within, following them through any redirects. These actions mimic real user engagement, potentially causing false opens and clicks to be recorded.


It's likely that most email marketers who have sent an email campaign have been affected by bot activity/non-human interaction. This activity can present a challenge because of the engagement that this creates can trigger automated campaigns based on false events because the inaccurate behaviour is tracked alongside the genuine activity.


What has Force24 done to combat NHI?

We have released a feature to enable users to see any non-human interaction in the platform marked against your campaign statistics and web-activity. This means all statistics in platform will be more accurate in their depiction of recipient interaction and activity; this includes opens/clicks as well as unique metrics*.


We've broken our approach into three steps.

  • The first step is what we have called the 'front door', this approach will simply not let any activity into the platform that is clearly non-human/bot activity. 
  • The second step pulls our metrics into a cloud, where AI is used to analyse whether there are any further bots that may present themselves. These activities could appear as regular clicking, and other activities that may be too fast for humans. 
  • Our third and final step, is you. We've implemented a voting system in the platform, whereby you can visit a contacts profile and mark their activity as non-human by simply liking or disliking an activity. Find out more on how to vote and access this tool here.


When accessing several points of the platform you can now see a view of what percentage of your statistics have been down to non-human interaction.


Is my lead score impacted by NHI?

Lead score is impacted by non-human interaction changes; as part of improved statistic accuracy we have deducted the lead score value against the customer activity that is 'non-human'. This means those with a high lead score, are in fact your highly engaged recipients!


How do I view NHI metrics?

There are three areas in the platform where you are able to view non-human interaction metrics. These areas are:

  • Contact activity page
  • Report page (For SMS, Single Send and Automated Campaigns)
  • Report export

You can find out how to navigate and see these metrics here.


What is the benefit of using the NHI feature?

Whilst the focus of your campaigns should not purely be based on vanity metrics like clicks and opens, enabling the non-human interaction feature ensures that the statistics in your account are as accurate as possible.


Read more on KPIs to improve your marketing effectiveness here!


How do I turn this filter on/off?

By default the non-human interaction filtering is turned on within your account. But if you decide you would like to opt out of this, you can add a request via the support team and this will be disabled.


This can be turned back on at any time, however data during the period it has been turned off would not be shown, and it would capture data from the point of being turned on, onwards.


*Please note: Unique metrics are reflected on the report page and have been deducted from the metrics if all of the users behaviour for the campaign was marked as non-human. When the unique stat is clicked, it will still show all customers regardless of the NHI marking.



Reach out to your account manager for a more in depth discussion on deliverability and how you can improve your strategy. Or alternatively, speak to our support team for any further questions on the above.