Every email marketeer wants to have a mailing report they can trust. For example, if your average click rate is 24,5 percent and your last mail scored 29 percent, you want your cheers to be justified. And with a difference that big, it probably is. If your click rate comes up to 43 percent, it's a different story.
If you've noticed that your click rate or open rate is very different to your average rates, there's a possibility that click bots have opened your email and/or clicked in it. This is something we want to prevent from happening, which is why Spotler has taken the necessary precautions to ward off as many mail bots from your mailing reports as possible. The rest of this article will give you more information on:
- What does a click bot do?
- Which measures has Spotler taken to keep click bots from polluting the mailing reports?
- FAQs
What does a click bot do?
Even though a click bot is an inconvenience when it comes to your mailing report, it was designed to protect your contacts from viruses and phishing. Bot protection is mostly used in B2B organizations. It could very well mean that your inbox is also protected by an email bot.
A click bot is made up of software that is connected to one of the email addresses you want to reach. Before the receiving server actually delivers your email in the inbox of johndoe@companyname.co.uk for instance, the bot checks your email. It does so by clicking on the links in the email to see if they are reliable and to check if they don't refer to websites or addresses that are blacklisted. If everything checks out, John Doe will receive your email. 
Which measures has Spotler take to keep click bots from polluting your mailing reports?
Spotler adds an additional link to the code of your email. This link is not visible to an actual person, but it is visible to a click bot. If Spotler registers a click on this link, it can say with 100% certainty that you're dealing with a click bot. After all, contacts on the receiving end don't see these invisible links.
In short, if johndoe@companyname.co.uk clicked on this invisible link, Spotler won't include the clicks coming from this address in your mailing report.
But rest assured: if the real John Doe signs up for your next event or requests a white paper, this conversion will be registered. Just make sure John has to fill in a form to do so. Click bots can check links, but they do not have the ability to fill in forms.
Even though Spotler came up with this clever solution, it's important to note that click bots can still pollute the results of your mailing report. After all, a click bot isn't obliged to click on the invisible link. But when Spotler registers one of these clicks, our software is 100% sure that it came from a click bot.
Update: together with the transition from ip4 to ip6, we've created a central database for click bots. If an address is registered as a click bot for Customer A, it will also be registered as a click bot for Customer B, and so on. Think back to December 2021. Did you notice a fluctuation in the number of clicks with significantly less clicks going into the new year? This is the moment we started collecting click bots in a central database. Now that we're better able to distinguish a real click from a bot click, your report is more reliable.
We are convinced that we're removing a large part of all bot activity from your mailing report. And because bots are continuously developing and showing more human behavior, we continue to keep a close eye on the development of bots.
Which measures can you take to ward off click bots?
There are two measures you can take without our help:
-
Set up DMARC
There are different ways to show a receiver that your emails aren't phishing mails. The most effective way to do so is using DMARC. When DMARC is installed, click bots have less of an effect on the mailing report. Your email is considered reliable. Read more on how to set up DMARC here: How do I set up DMARC? -
Whitelisting Spotler's IP addresses
(this only applies when you're sending an internal newsletter with Spotler)
Are you sending out internal newsletters? In that case, you have more influence on click bots. If you whitelist Spotler's IP addresses, the click bot will ignore emails coming from Spotler. Send the following IP range to your system administrator: 46.31.48.0/21.
FAQs
That depends on the situation.
Consider the following. A click bots uses IP address 1.1.1.1 and clicks on the invisible link. Next, the receiver gets the email on the same IP address and clicks link(s) in the email. In this case, Spotler doesn't see the difference and labels the address as a click bot. The mailing report won't register any of these clicks as a result. Email marketing software cannot distinguish between email addresses with a bot and email addresses without one, so it's not a shortcoming on Spotler's behalf. No Email Service Provider can. In addition, this doesn't mean that the email address will be filtered out of every report. It's only filtered out of the mailing report where the invisible link was clicked.
On the other hand, if the same situation presents itself but the receiver clicks somewhere in the email through a different IP address, 2.2.2.2 for example, this receiver will be reactivated and its clicks will be shown in the report.
If the bot checks the emails from a different location or when its assigned to an email address at random such as johndoe@companyname.co.uk, all of the clicks coming from this email address will be filtered out. But the clicks coming from his colleague sarahwilson@companyname.co.uk will be registered in full. This is because her email address isn't linked to a bot. Unfortunately, Spotler has no influence on the bots' settings in the receiving email server.