PT
1
Too much clicks on newsletter links
We run a newsletter tool, which suddenly counts a lot of clicks with some subscribers. It is not an error in the code, otherwise it would be the same problem with all statistics. With some newsletters every link is clicked once (or even twice) within seconds. That can't be a human. Has anyone experienced something like this? Are there mail servers or tools that automatically scan all links in a newsletter first? We are grateful for any help.
Unfortunately your results might be tainted by a spam bot scanner that is part of the recipient company's email security. They open the emails programmatically and click all links to verify the target URLs are safe.
No human would click on each link methodically (like privacy links and every single social media link). If you have timestamps on the email events they will all be clicked within 30 seconds (faster than a human).
Here is a blog post about the issue: https://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/spam-bot-fake-clicks-in-email-3467/
The blog post has a very good email design recommendation which is to add a stealth bait link. You add a "fake link" that is not visible to the human reader but visible in the HTML code. A spam bot can see this link and will click it. This will tell you if the email was clicked by a human or a robot.
There are conflicting articles I've found about this approach but we have had success in filtering out bot clicks with this method.
Thank you Graeme, this is an interesting blog post! The trick with the hided link could be a good solution...
We have seen an increase in these clicks over the past two years. We found this to be heightened server security on the recipient's side. For example, during delivery to a recipient at a university, the university's server checks every single link in that email for viruses, etc. Some email tracking programs such as Salesforce will interpret this as clicks.
Thanks Leslie, this is what we've expected too.