Email Bots Logging Web Activity - HELP | Community
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Adele_Miller
Adele_Miller
Level 3
February 2, 2017
Question

Email Bots Logging Web Activity - HELP

  • February 2, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 9254 views

Hi Champs!

I am hoping someone can help me as I am on the verge of screaming at this issue

We have an issue with email bots / spam checkers clicking every single link on some of our emails before delivering them to the real recipients inbox.

We used to filter these out by no web activity being logged as the bots couldn't log that but recently we have noted they can now log activity against each lead and Support have confirmed this....GRRR!!

We use Sales Insight so this is giving a lot of false positives to sales to follow up on and we want to work out a way to filter this out.

Anyone else having this issue and have some fun ways to resolve it please??

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    4 replies

    Mark_Farnell
    Mark_Farnell
    Level 5
    February 3, 2017

    We haven't fully solved the issue, but we have changed our process to try and mitigate it.  Previously we scored for "email click" and for known leads just pointed them to the hosted content on our nurture emails - that was driving a lot of false positives, so now we only score on a program conversion, which in the case of email nurture means we also now put a form in front of the content to measure a real conversion.  It's by no means ideal, but pre-fill helps and it does mean we don't create a lot of false positives, which was creating a larger issue for us.

    Adele_Miller
    Adele_MillerAuthor
    Level 3
    February 3, 2017

    Morning Mark,

    Thank you for your answer - this is what we also have in place to ensure we are not marking people as converted on a click.
    However we are trying to find a way to stop this so called 'web activity' showing up in our MSI Tabs as it is confusing Sales - same with the clicks really. Can you think of anything there?I am struggling as it isn't something we have an option of filtering.

    Thanks!

    Sarah_Lundy1
    Sarah_Lundy1
    Level 2
    February 3, 2017

    Hi Adele,

    Can I just ask - how is a bot check actually linking with a true lead? Are you passing to sales leads before firm data collection on industry/name/email address combo for example - would this not exclude the bot crawls linking to lead behaviour?

    Thanks

    Sarah

    Adele_Miller
    Adele_MillerAuthor
    Level 3
    February 3, 2017

    Hi Sarah! As the emails being sent have Marketo tracked links, the bot is clicking all links before sending to the real recipient and Marketo sees that as activity from the lead as this is how the bot is intended to work.
    The bot in question sits on the recipients mailbox and clicks every link to ensure the email is safe before sending it through to the real inbox, so the leads are known to the system. We don't mark them as responded or anything off the click, but it shows in MSI on web activity and also the MSI email tab as clicked if it was a sales sent email. Really annoying false positives!

    A
    Anonymous
    February 9, 2017

    Hi Adele-

    Does the bot activity also log an open of the email? I've seen this in the past where the bot will click links but won't load all content, so the pixel that triggers an email open never fires. You could filter on people that didn't open the email but clicked to get the bots out.

    However, on the other hand, this would filter out people that receive text emails by default. If the bots are really taking a toll, this may be worth the sacrifice.

    Thanks,

    Keith

    SanfordWhiteman
    SanfordWhiteman
    Level 10
    February 9, 2017

    However, on the other hand, this would filter out people that receive text emails by default. If the bots are really taking a toll, this may be worth the sacrifice.

    And Outlook users!

    This is one of many reasons why heuristic detection (and discarding) of mail scanner traffic must be done at the tracking server, whether your own or Marketo's. It'll always fail to some degree, but it'll fail extra hard if you try to jerry-rig it with Marketo's end user tools.

    A
    Anonymous
    February 9, 2017

    Thanks Sanford - quick question on that, why would it filter Outlook users? I haven't hit problems with Outlook users not logging opens in the past. Is it only certain versions of Outlook?

    Marisa_Rybar
    Marisa_Rybar
    Level 4
    August 3, 2017

    I am having issues with bots clicking AND opening emails. I've stopped scoring email opens, and I'm only scoring email clicks very selectively.

    However, now my concern is in email reporting. If I can see on the individual activity logs that an email is being opened before it's being delivered, is that counting as an open in my overall email report? So, for example, I had a newsletter go out this morning. Marketo is telling me it had a 29.1% open rate and a 7.9% click to open rate, but which of these are real opens & clicks, and which of them were bots? I'm having a really hard time trusting the data I'm seeing right now.

    Devraj_Grewal
    Devraj_Grewal
    Level 10
    August 3, 2017

    Marisa,

    Correct, if the click and open activity is from a bot or a human, it will still show in the activity log and an email report. What I would recommend is using "member of smart campaign" for the scoring clicks smart campaign and filtering by those in the email report. So then the report only includes people who had at least validated activity enough for the scoring.

    Marisa_Rybar
    Marisa_Rybar
    Level 4
    August 3, 2017

    I'm sorry, Devraj, but I don't understand what you're saying. The only people who received this email were members of the smart campaign that sent the email, so it doesn't change the numbers at all whether I look at this from the Email tab on the smart campaign or whether I look at this from the Email Performance Report where the parameters are this specific email in the Setup tab and the Smart List logic specifies members of the smart campaign that sent the email this morning.

    Would you mind please being more clear? The bots from the emails of the people on this smart list are the ones doing the activity, so I don't see any way of distinguishing between the bot and the human. The only way I could fathom doing this would be to set parameters that say not to score something if it is opened or clicked on before the email is delivered, but that capability doesn't currently exist as far as I can tell.

    Thanks for the ideas and insights!

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