Filter Out Bot Clicks - Require Email Open? | Community
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cblack-2
Level 2
September 8, 2020
Question

Filter Out Bot Clicks - Require Email Open?

  • September 8, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 6613 views

We've recently started seeing a high number of clicks generated by bots. We have many smartcampaigns that fire off of clicks link in email. Would requiring clicks link in email AND opened an email in the past day resolve this? At least some of it? What other solutions have people found? Is there an item on the roadmap to automatically filter these out?

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2 replies

Aseem_Gupta
Aseem_Gupta
Level 2
September 9, 2020

Hi @cblack-2 

 

In order to track Bot clicks, simply create Bot likelihood Campaigns with clicks counter and visits counter and then based on clicks and visits counting, decide whether the lead is bot or not.

 

For example :

Bot Likelihood is high when someone is clicking CTA multiple times and visiting page is empty (or not recorded in marketo)

Bot Likelihood is low when someone receives future email (email is delivered is recorded into marketo)

 

Thanks!

 

 

Aseem_Gupta
Aseem_Gupta
Level 2
September 9, 2020

In addition to my above post, this may not be the 100% accurate/reliable way and would be great to have more thoughts.

Katja_Keesom
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Katja_KeesomCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
October 26, 2020

As many people have already said in response, a fully reliable solution is simply not present. I do however like the suggestion made in a previous discussion on this topic to include a 1 pixel image in your email template (blending into the background) with a url behind it. The logic is this link is not visible, so a normal human being would not click on it. Therefore any person clicking this link would be highly suspected to be a bot.

Does anyone have experience with this solution and its accuracy?

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
October 26, 2020

The pixel tells you that one hit was from a mail scanner, but it doesn't tell you which subsequent hits (and even prior hits, depending on scanner behavior) are from the mail scanner vs. interactive human.

    Katja_Keesom
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    Katja_KeesomCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    October 27, 2020

    That is entirely true. It serves mainly to identify the suspected leads where mail scanners are active. You would need to further analyse these records to see the rest of their behaviour pattern and decide whether you want to exclude the entire lead from scoring on clicks or not. By no means a perfect solution, but from what I have seen so far the most likely to correctly identify leads with mail scanners running.

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