Thank you for your detailed feedback and for sharing your workflow! Dealing with corporate firewalls and security bots artificially inflating your click rates has been a massive challenge across the entire email marketing industry.
We have some fantastic news. You no longer need to use tiny fonts, hidden links, or manual spreadsheet cross-referencing to find your real human engagement.
Since this thread was originally posted, Constant Contact has deployed Bot Click Filtering natively into our reporting system! Our platform automatically identifies rapid, non-human clicks generated by known corporate security scanners and firewalls. We automatically separate these automated clicks from your primary reporting metrics, ensuring your overall "Click Rate" reflects genuine, human engagement.
Why we restrict display:none in the drag-and-drop editor: While adding a Custom HTML block or allowing display:none CSS in the standard editor remains Acknowledged and under consideration for other design purposes, we actually strongly advise against using hidden text in modern email marketing.
Hiding text or links using display:none or making text the exact same color as the background is considered a deceptive practice by major inbox providers (like Gmail and Outlook). Because malicious spammers frequently use this tactic to hide malicious URLs or manipulate text-to-image ratios, using display:none can severely damage your sender reputation and cause your emails to be routed directly to the Spam folder.
Because our native Bot Click Filtering solves the core tracking issue without jeopardizing your deliverability, we highly recommend relying on your standard reporting dashboard!
