Email Bot Clicks: Impact on Your Marketing Campaigns

By Kendra Torrick
Senior Account Manager
Connect with me on LinkedIn

Are bot clicks impacting your email metrics?

Email security bots are distorting important email marketing metrics with bot clicks. These automated systems scan incoming emails for harmful links to protect the email users, creating inflated email campaign metrics that mask true human user engagement. With ongoing threats like malware, these measures aren't going away. Understanding bot clicks and learning to detect and filter these clicks in your email campaigns gives email marketers accurate insights into real audience engagement and ensures your email metrics reflect actual campaign success and maintain a good sender reputation.

How bot clicks affect marketing emails

Bot clicks affect emails by creating artificial engagement that doesn't represent actual human interest or real user behavior, significantly impacting your email marketing strategy. They artificially inflate open rates and click rates, resulting in inflated metrics and leading email marketers to invest in strategies for future email campaigns based on false positives rather than genuine user behavior.

These automated clicks also skew A/B testing results, potentially causing incorrect conclusions about which email elements perform better. The impact varies depending on your target audience's IT systems. Organizations with strict security measures and sophisticated email monitoring will experience higher activity. When bot clicks mix with genuine engagement, segmentation becomes less effective, potentially triggering inappropriate follow-up content or generating false Marketing Qualified Leads.

Bot activity can also mask deliverability issues that would otherwise signal problems with your email strategy, since email service providers rely on engagement metrics for sender reputation. Additionally, bot clicks create phantom customer journeys that don't reflect user behavior, complicating attribution tracking and making it difficult to determine which campaigns truly drive lead conversions and revenue.

What are email bot clicks?

Email bot clicks are automated interactions with email links generated by security software rather than real human recipients. These bots scan emails for malicious content to protect users from phishing and malware, but they artificially inflate your click rates and skew campaign analytics. The security software causing this activity is constantly changing to keep up with potential threats.

Enterprise security applications

Enterprise email security applications like Mimecast, Proofpoint, and Barracuda are software examples of primary sources of bot clicks. They protect recipients in corporate email systems by automatically scanning all incoming links for potential threats, monitoring for malware, phishing attempts, and suspicious redirects.

When emails arrive, these systems resolve URLs to their final destination and analyze target websites for threats. Advanced gateways use 'sandboxing' technology by opening suspicious links in isolated environments to safely observe behavior without risking the organization's network.

Email provider security

Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo use automated systems to scan links before delivering messages, adding another layer of email security activity. Most email security systems now employ these scanning techniques.

Preview generators & classification tools

Preview generators are another example of software that creates false activity by automatically downloading email content to generate inbox thumbnails, triggering tracking pixels and links before humans open messages.

Classification algorithms follow URLs to determine inbox placement (primary, promotions, or spam), creating false click data while evaluating content quality and sender reputation. Anti-spam applications operating throughout the email delivery chain add yet another layer of automated engagement, all occurring before recipients see messages in their inboxes.

How to uncover bot clicks in email marketing

To identify bot clicks, look for anomalies that genuine behavior rarely produces: millisecond-speed opens, simultaneous clicks across multiple links, or mechanically precise engagement patterns. Bots don't browse or hesitate; they execute programmed actions instantly. These automated clicks create patterns distinct from genuine user engagement. Watch for opens within seconds of delivery, multiple links clicked in impossible succession, or identical engagement patterns from the same IP across hundreds of sends. While genuine subscribers open emails, skim content, and click thoughtfully, bots trigger every trackable element almost simultaneously, often before anyone can finish reading the subject line.

Find bot activity

Once you've spotted automated activity, quantify its impact:

• Filter timing anomalies – Pull reports for opens within 60 seconds of delivery, then cross-reference with clicks occurring under five seconds
• Review patterns – Check your email reports for these telltale signs of bot behavior
• Analyze traffic sources – Examine geographic data and IP addresses for activity clusters from data centers or cloud providers rather than residential ISPs
• Use analytics tools – like Google Analytics can help you segment this data and spot patterns in bot behavior
• Calculate true engagement – By segmenting suspected false clicks separately, you can determine genuine engagement rates and make decisions based on real user behavior

Beyond manual audits, implement ongoing monitoring systems. Consider adding honeypot links or hidden links (invisible elements that only bots interact with) to pinpoint false activity. Track engagement velocity by measuring how quickly actions occur after send time; consistent patterns of instant engagement from the same segments or IP ranges likely indicate persistent bot sources. Many advanced email platforms now offer machine learning tools that baseline normal engagement patterns and automatically surface anomalies, allowing continuous refinement of bot detection rules as security systems evolve.

Preventing bot clicks in email campaigns

You can't completely prevent non-human clicks since they're generated by necessary email systems, but you can minimize their impact by using the latest filtering tools. Implement hidden "honeypot" links that only bots will click to identify and segment automated activity from your engagement metrics. Focus more on downstream metrics like conversions and revenue rather than relying solely on click-through rates and opens, which are most affected by false activity. Here are some key strategies to reduce interference in your campaigns:

Build a clean audience list

• Implement double opt-in – Require subscribers to confirm email addresses, filtering automated sign-ups before they reach your list
• Use CAPTCHA – Block bot registrations on signup forms
• Choose the right ESP – Select email service providers with robust bot filtering features, as platforms vary in handling security features
• Audit regularly – Remove subscribers showing bot-like patterns: zero engagement beyond opens, mechanical click patterns, or suspicious geographic inconsistencies

Optimize your email infrastructure

• Segment new subscribers – Monitor engagement patterns separately before integrating them into main lists
• Authenticate your emails – Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols to improve deliverability and reduce aggressive bot filtering
• Stagger send times – Avoid blasting entire lists simultaneously to make unnatural engagement spikes easier to spot
• Test messaging variations – Genuine subscribers respond differently to different content, while bots maintain consistent behavior

The reality check

While these prevention tactics help, effectiveness depends on variables you can't control: your recipient's email security system (Proofpoint, Mimecast, Barracuda), their IT team's scanning configuration, and the email client (Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail). What prevents bot clicks from one security vendor might fail against another. A strategy bypassing Gmail's web interface might fail in Outlook's desktop client. This unpredictability is why prevention alone isn't enough, organizations need robust detection and mitigation strategies to filter bot clicks that inevitably get through.

How a highly regulated company got clean analytics with TrueVoice

Have you ever analyzed an email report that just seemed too good to be true? At TrueVoice, we were initially impressed to report high KPI metrics to our client when running a lead generation email campaign last year, but the team had a feeling the numbers were too impressive. The adage proved to be correct again: if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Instead of celebrating, the team dug into the numbers.

Investigating the problem

TrueVoice went beyond standard email metrics reporting by analyzing each engagement by email address to provide a comprehensive view of who was engaging and what they were engaging with. The report revealed unusual activity patterns that pointed to bot interference.

Three suspicious engagement patterns

The team identified clear signs of bot clicks:

• Every link clicked – Email addresses that clicked on every clickable part of the email
• Rapid-fire clicks – Multiple clicks on the same links within seconds
• Unusual footer activity – An unusually high number of email footer clicks

Pattern #1: Impossibly fast engagement

While engaged readers may click every link, they don't do it within one minute. That was our first clue when examining the unusual activity by email address and timestamps. We reviewed numerous recipients all at the same organization following identical click patterns—a clear sign of bot clicks from their email security program. After labeling that suspicious activity as security bots, we were determined to quantify the problem.

Pattern #2: Repetitive clicking

Next, we examined the click timestamps more closely. TrueVoice reviewed a large number of multiple clicks on single URLs within seconds—another clear sign that these were bot clicks inflating the email's click rates. The team labeled those engagements as bot clicks as well.

Pattern #3: Systematic footer clicks

Finally, we examined which email sections showed higher-than-baseline click rates. This campaign had a 50% increase in footer activity compared to the client's baseline, plus systematic clicks on all footer links and repeated clicks on URLs like the privacy policy, the final piece confirming bot activity.

Separating human clicks from bot clicks

After identifying and filtering all three bot patterns, the results were stunning: only 20% of the reported campaign engagements were real audience interactions. Bot traffic made up 80% of engagement metrics. This was a huge discovery for both TrueVoice and the client, especially considering we had never encountered an email click bot issue of this magnitude before.

Why this campaign was different

Two key factors explained the unprecedented bot activity:

The list source changed

Previously, the client had used first-party data with minimal bot interference. For this particular campaign, however, they were targeting a new audience segment using a third-party list, which partly explained the influx of bot traffic. However, the list wasn't the only factor.

The target audience mattered

The timing and target audience also played critical roles. This campaign focused on large enterprise organizations. As corporations face increasingly sophisticated security threats, their defensive solutions become more aggressive. Larger corporations have more sophisticated security infrastructure, making their email security systems more likely to scan every message before delivery.

Building a bot filtering solution

The impact and response

This finding was a significant blow to the client, especially since no one had ever brought up the possibility of false engagements to the enterprise before. As the client escalated these issues at the enterprise level, TrueVoice went to work on a solution to combat bot engagement automation.

The platform limitation

The client's email platform had no built-in bot filtering system. Like many enterprise email tools, it counted every click as genuine engagement, making it impossible to distinguish human interest from automated scans. Without traffic filtering, the client couldn't trust their data or accurately measure ROI.

The custom solution

TrueVoice developed a proprietary bot filtering system tailored to this client's specific needs and email infrastructure. The solution analyzes engagement patterns and behavioral signals to identify and flag bot activity. We also implement hidden links directly within emails that are invisible to human readers but automatically clicked by bots, enabling instant identification and filtering of automated traffic. This gives the client clean, actionable data they can trust.

This healthcare client's experience is becoming standard. As organizations invest in aggressive email security solutions, marketers across industries face the same challenge: separating signal from noise. Once you understand how bot clicks manifest in campaigns, you can identify and filter them. Accurate data leads to better decisions, more effective campaigns, and ultimately a clearer picture of how your audience truly engages with your content.

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