Respondents who open "all links" in an email

[jbriskincanby]

Every month we send out several segemented client newsletter digest featuring links to new financial education content on our website. When the email is sent, I export all of the "clicks" to see which links were clicked and who clicked them. It's a crucial way for us to find out which topics our clients and prospects may be interested in. 

Usually with every email there are one or two people of each list who seemingly click on every link, including our social media links. I usually throw those out because I theorize that something in their email system is tagging every link as being "clicked." 

With our last set of newsletters, sent out on Friday, May 17, at least 10-15 recipients on each list "clicked on every single link." This is much higher than average. I'm wondering if there's something weird in the email itself that is causing these "click everything" results? Note that these results are happening on a variety of email addresses, from gmail to corporate email addresses. None of these emails were blocked or tagged as spam. 

[William_A]

Hello @jbriskincanby ,

Was there any other commonality for those contacts, such as being a part of the same organization, or working for either a major corporation or government facility? Even the regular Gmail addresses might've been impacted if their users were on a secure network when they checked, or if they individually added that security functionality. For the newer addresses, were these clicks all done within a single minute or two, as well?

[jbriskincanby]

All recipients are consumer clients, with a variety of email addresses.  While a couple of the "click everything" recipients had gmail addresses, the majority of them seemed to have corporate domains, i.e., they seemed to receiving these emails at work. There were no "click everythings" for emails send to addresses with webmail domains like aoi.com or comcast.com our outlook.com.  

[William_A]

I haven't seen this occur for direct Gmail addresses before, and I'm not currently finding anything in their support areas that would suggest their system would be triggering link clicks and open-tracking pixel downloads to scan for malware. I'm wondering if those particular Gmail contacts have something else on their end that would be doing that, or if they're accessing their personal Gmail accounts on private networks that employ those functions. 

It may be worth reaching out to those contacts, to see if they'd be able to safelist your address, as that can avoid the security click triggers, depending on the program used. Otherwise for the corporate contacts, you may want to reach out to their IT to see if they can make sure you're safelisted in their system? Beyond that, since you're already setup for self-authentication, there's not much else you'd be able to do from your end to mitigate this. 

You could also try identifying and isolating the contacts using these security bot clicks, and add them to lists denoting they're using such programs. Then you could send copies of your email to the bot versions of your lists, so you're still getting the message sent, but they're not skewing the data of your main sendout. Or, if you feel the contacts aren't actually worthwhile, then your other option is to delete them. 

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. Since you've already self-authenticated, 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.

[jbriskincanby]

I had a long chat session today with a Constant Contact representative. Here are some of their responses:

"Some email providers may have introduced new and improved link verification services, to enhance the security of email communications."

"Due to these upgraded security measures, you may have observed an increase in clicks or click rates in your email campaigns. This is a result of the verification process that some recipients' email systems are conducting to validate the safety of the links within your emails."

"This means that when these agents interact with your email links, they won't be counted as actual opens in your reporting. This is an ongoing process, so some bot clicks/opens may still occur when sending to certain recipients."

"We are continually monitoring and updating our system and lists to better identify these non-human interactions. These changes ensure that your data remains accurate and trustworthy."

"We've carefully updated our systems to identify these groups in addition to continually updating our list of non-human user agents, which includes these new link verification services."

"I do understand your concern on this. I will make sure to pass this issue on your behalf to our specialist team and make sure to add this as soon as possible."

[SteveH7794]

this automated or bot link checking is wrecking havoc on my campaign results.  My click count/ratios are great but only because of the automated clicks.... any suggestions from CC team?  

[user55542]

Hey there! I'm experiencing a similar issue, but all of my contacts do work for the same organization. Why can't it report accurately opens and clicks?

[William_A]

Hello @user55542 ,

If the bot program acts like a contact normally would by triggering the coded tracking pixel for opens and rewritten URL for click tracks, then it's going to result in the skewed reporting. See my below comment for your options on how to best handle these problematic contacts.