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EllenSchwier
Adobe Champion and User Group Leader
EllenSchwierAdobe Champion and User Group Leader
Adobe Champion and User Group Leader
Nov 10, 2022 9:00 AM UTC
Question

More bot clicks on links with UTM parameters

Hi everyone,

 

I have a client that recently noticed that she got waaaaay more clicks on links that included the UTM tracking parameters than the links where she forgot to include them. It appears that the links with utm_source and utm_medium get far more bot clicks than those without.

 

Has anyone else experienced something similar?

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4 replies

Vinay_Kumar
Community Advisor and User Group Leader
Vinay_KumarCommunity Advisor and User Group Leader
Community Advisor and User Group Leader
Nov 10, 2022 11:20 AM UTC

@ellenschwier, can you please share example URLs?

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EllenSchwier
Adobe Champion and User Group Leader
EllenSchwierAdobe Champion and User Group LeaderAuthor
Adobe Champion and User Group Leader
Nov 11, 2022 10:33 AM UTC

The URLs ranged from links to the home page to the login link for the webshop to a specific landing page. The utm parameters added also use tokens, but I can't image that this makes a difference.

 

I was just curious what others have experienced. Our next step is deliberately running an A/B test on whole emails to compare an email with no tracking to one with tracking.

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Ellen
Vinay_Kumar
Community Advisor and User Group Leader
Vinay_KumarCommunity Advisor and User Group Leader
Community Advisor and User Group Leader
Nov 11, 2022 1:01 PM UTC

I have actually experienced the same for one of my clients when we were using tokens to add the CTA links and modifying the ways of token utilization worked for us in that case. 

So, could you please share an example of how are you using tokens in the URLs?

like {{my.lpurl}} where {{my.lpurl}} = example.com?utm_medium=ABC&utm_source=marketo&utm_campaign=XYZ

 

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Darshil_Shah1
Adobe Champion, Community Advisor, UG Leader
Darshil_Shah1Adobe Champion, Community Advisor, UG Leader
Adobe Champion, Community Advisor, UG Leader
Nov 10, 2022 1:31 PM UTC

A lot of email scanners click the first link in the email within 1-5 minutes of the email send. Did the first link in your case have the UTM parameters? With that being said, we cannot totally discount the possibility that more sophisticated bots are more wired to click links with UTM parameters compared to the ones that don't have them, irrespective of where the links are in the email.

 

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