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Emilia_Chionce3
Emilia_Chionce3
Level 2
Mar 11, 2021 7:23 PM UTC
Question

10X + Inflated click rate over the past 2 weeks

Hi Community, 

 

We see super inflated click rates in the past 2 weeks ( e.g. over 2% click rate now, versus 0,2% in february).

We experience them within several Marketo instances and did not yet figure out the cause. Marketo Support provided a general response on what bot clicks are but did not confirm a root cause of the sudden change. 

We see that they have in common a number of 3 consecutive clicks right before the email is delivered. 

 

Did anyone else experience this? 

 

Thank you, 

Emilia

12 replies

SanfordWhiteman
User Group Leader
SanfordWhitemanUser Group Leader
User Group Leader
Mar 11, 2021 8:56 PM UTC

It's very common. The more of your audience moves from lower-powered email security layers to higher-powered mail scanners, the more clicks you'll have.

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emiliac
emiliac
Level 2
Mar 15, 2021 4:51 PM UTC

Hey Sandy, 

 

Thank you for your response.

The gap is very high, for March sends only; I actually suspect there is an issue on the Marketo side, and wanted to see if anyone else is encountering it?

Here is how the click rate suddenly increased, in 2 separate Marketo instances:

 

Best, 

Emilia

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SanfordWhiteman
User Group Leader
SanfordWhitemanUser Group Leader
User Group Leader
Mar 15, 2021 6:04 PM UTC

The final percentage doesn't seem that high at all. The original percentage strikes me as extremely low. Of course the other number of interest is the raw number of clicks (effect size) not only the percentage.

 

 

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carolined443100
Level 2
Mar 23, 2021 4:18 PM UTC

Hey Emilia,

 

We have been experiencing the same issue as you.  At the end of February, we started seeing extremely high numbers of clicks on our emails, including 1,000+ clicks on links to our social media pages which is not common for us. As you mentioned, we are seeing activity history of Email Delivered and 3 link clicks all at the same time.  Marketo Support also shared information with us about scanner bots and suggested that was likely the cause.  

 

We are still experiencing this issue with all of our emails and are working on an alternative solution for reporting.  From what I've seen in other posts in the Community, others have tried the pulling Smart Lists using filters of "Clicks Link in Email" AND "Visited Web Page".  While this number is not 100% accurate, it does appear to be closer to what our click rates were prior to the inflation.  

 

We are still testing this method out but I thought I'd at least share with you our experience as well.  If there is any update or if you've found a better solution, please share! 

 

Thanks!

Caroline

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Emilia_Chionce3
Emilia_Chionce3Author
Level 2
Mar 29, 2021 10:00 AM UTC

Hey Caroline, 

 

Thank you very much for your response here, really appreciate it. It was strange to me that no one faced this lately, and that not even Marketo could confirm it, whilst I've seen this sudden spike in several instances already.

And thanks for your recommendation. I will look into proceeding the same. 

 

Have a great week, 

Emilia

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Katja_Keesom
Adobe Champion and Community Advisor
Katja_KeesomAdobe Champion and Community Advisor
Adobe Champion and Community Advisor
Mar 30, 2021 5:29 AM UTC

Hi both,

As Sanford indicated, this is indeed behaviour that is all too common. And with the numbers you indicate one large email server upgrading their features to include a mailscanner can impact a relatively large part of your audience.

Unfortunately the addition of the "Visited web page" is not guaranteed to mitigate the issue, as some mailscanners will actually mimic the actual web visit too.

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