Click Rates Increased Dramatically

[ConnieR68]

Hello,

I scheduled a few messages to go out this morning and noticed our click-rate has increased dramatically since our last mailing. We typically get 100-200 clicks per message, whereas now were getting about 1000-3500 clicks. As much as I'd like to take credit for it, these figures seem to be inflated. Was there a recent update that might be causing this?

[William_A]

Hello @ConnieR68 ,

To my knowledge, no changes have been made in regards to how clicks or overall reporting is conducted, nor did our higher level technical team note anything that's been explicitly changed. It may simply be a matter of shifting audience engagement after the holidays, or a matter of your calls-to-action and other content being more enticing than previously. 

[William_A]

I will note that when my team was perusing your emails to see what might've been sticking out as unusual about them compared to earlier ones, is that one of the links was receiving a particularly high number of clicks compared to others. The main thing about this link is that in the email it's setup to be essentially the same as the rest of the text - nothing distinguishing it as a link.

One thing that some email programs and network security algorithms will utilize are bots that scan for suspicious elements contain in incoming emails. A plain text link is a regular tactic utilized by phishers and other scammers that could definitely trigger these algorithms and bots to "click" the link to check it for malicious content, prior to delivering.

If you are suspicious about your opens and/or clicks spiking, this would be the most likely suspect to check out. You could test to see if your click rates go back down or remain steady, either by completely removing the link for that bit of text, or by making it more obviously a link (color change, underlining, etc.)

[EdSource]

The click rate and open rate have also spiked on our emails within the last week. We haven't changed any call to action on our emails. 

[ConnieR68]

This remains an issue and is totally skewing our data. Since the last time I've reached out, I've made sure that all links in our messages are distinguishable, yet our open and click rate data remains inconsistent. On some messages the click rates have increased from 1% to 25%. This has been going on for the past 3 months. Do you happen to know if any email service providers have updated security settings that could impact this data? Or is there anything else in our messages that could make anti-spam filters suspicious and trigger server clicks?

[William_A · Accepted solution]

Overall, your open and click rates have remained pretty consistent during this time. If this was a constant occurrence, then it may be of higher concern for your metrics. However, based on your reporting the last few months, only two emails have had significantly higher click rates. It's possible that the institutions of the segments those two particular emails were sent to are simply going to be utilizing the bot checkers more aggressively since they'd be required to.

The only other suggestion I'd have is to swap your authentication to self-authentication since you have your own domain. 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. 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, after setting your account up for self-auth, the click rate spikes start bleeding into your other regular sendouts, 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.