CTR reporting off by thousands?

[RichW]

I sent out our monthly newsletter last week. We have about 6,000 total contacts, and we average around 1,000 total opens per newsletter. For some reason, the report for this newsletter is telling me each of the 9 links in the newsletter (content, social links, logo link, etc.) was clicked 1,450 times. This is clearly inaccurate. I'm trying to understand why this happened, and how I can get a more accurate report. It's not the first time it's happened, and it's making it very difficult to do my job. For example, one link was a YouTube video; the YouTube video has 26 views since going live 1 week ago. However, Constant Contact is telling me it was clicked over 1,450 times.

[William_A · Accepted solution]

Hello @RichW ,

If their network or email program uses some kind of security tool that "opens" emails and "clicks" their links to check for malware, it can result in that kind of data. This will be indicated by those contacts clicking all the poll options at the same time, typically within 1-2 minutes of you sending the email. Based on what I'm seeing from your latest email's click reporting, this seems to be the situation with a significant portion of those contacts.

Do you know if there was anything particularly different about this email compared to your previous ones? It looks like you used the same self-authenticated sending address you have before, so I can't imagine that is somehow changing how the receiving contacts' networks are viewing your email's trustworthiness. 

In all honesty, the only suggestion I'd normally have is to swap your authentication to self-authentication since you have your own domain, however as already noted, your account is set up as such. Ideally, this would show the security algorithms that emails being sent through us by you are effectively coming directly from you, and avoid triggering the clicks/opens from bots.

Beyond that, there's not much else you can do from your end to prevent these. Our devs are constantly trying to identify the various programs that utilize this functionality, so they can set our system to ignore the behavior and triggers from these particular programs. If the click rates continue to be inflated or worsen, then it may be worth calling in. That way our general support or higher level technical team can see if there's any further info that can be gleamed from the content of the emails with you live on the phone, or to see if the domains of the contacts that are seeming to bot-click them show any other particular consistencies we can track.

If you're finding a significant amount of your contacts are utilizing these programs, then the other advice I have would come down to one of two options:

• Delete the bot-click contacts from your account entirely - only do this if you feel they are absolutely not worthwhile clientele/customers, and aren't actually interested in what you're sending them.
• Make "Bot-Click" versions of all of your lists, and move these contacts out of the normal lists and into those bot-click versions. Then you'd need to have two copies of each email, one for the regular contacts and the other for the bot-clicks, and send the email to the corresponding list. This way your reporting for the normal contacts is more accurate, and the bot-clickers are isolated but still available to send to. This won't help your account's overall averages for reporting, but it will make the specified email campaigns - and the Reporting page if specifically comparing those - much more accurate for your needs. 

[RichW]

I appreciate the response and walking me through the options. As you mentioned, we have already set things up to work properly and, at this point, "there's not much else you can do from your end to prevent these." 

We also have zero bot-click contacts.

It sounds like "calling in" is my only option here, as this has been happening for months now. In our most recent email, it was really important to get an accurate separate email list for anyone that clicked on this one link in the email. With it telling me over 1,400 people opened the email and clicked on each link, there isn't an ounce of information I can glean from it that's useful. We've started the process of exploring other email options, because as I mentioned this has been making it impossible to do my job and for us to have any idea who is clicking what. 

Thank you again for making and taking the time.