Are Bots Messing with Your Email Stats – or Helping Them?

It was an ordinary day for Sarah, a digital marketer managing a global email campaign for her company. Everything seemed to be running smoothly, except for one small detail that kept gnawing at her: the email metrics didn’t make sense.

The latest report showed an unusual spike in opens and clicks, far beyond what her campaign typically generated. She was excited at first, thinking her latest strategy had struck gold. But as the hours passed, the numbers didn’t seem to add up.

She started digging deeper, trying to understand where this surge in engagement was coming from. Oddly, it wasn’t just from her target audience. She noticed clicks coming from random places around the world—regions that had nothing to do with her campaign. That’s when it hit her: this might be the work of something else, something not quite human.

"Non-human clicks," she muttered to herself as she recalled reading about them in a marketing article. These clicks weren’t from eager subscribers but from automated systems—virus scanners and security software—checking the validity of links before or after the email hit an inbox.

As helpful as these systems were for protecting users from phishing scams, they were now throwing a wrench into her marketing data, making it hard to differentiate real customer engagement from machine activity.

Sarah knew that if she didn’t find a solution soon, her entire email campaign could be affected. False engagement metrics would skew her results, leading to inaccurate reporting, incorrect audience segmentation, and ultimately, misguided business decisions. What if she mistakenly sent follow-up emails to people who didn’t even engage with her content? Her marketing ROI could plummet.

Just as Sarah was beginning to feel overwhelmed, she received an email from her email service provider, Marigold. The subject line read: “Introducing Our Non-Human Click Filter – Clean Up Your Metrics!” Intrigued, she opened it immediately.

The email explained how non-human clicks were becoming a growing issue for marketers everywhere, just as Sarah had experienced. The new filter, specifically designed to catch these machine-generated clicks, would remove them from her reports, leaving only the real human interactions behind. Not only would this clean up her data, but it would also improve location-based segments and send-time optimization. It was exactly what she needed.

With renewed hope, Sarah quickly contacted her account representative and activated the non-human click filter for her campaign. The next report came in, and this time, it made sense. The strange spike was gone, and she could finally see which of her subscribers had actually clicked through, giving her a clearer picture of how her strategy was performing.

For the first time in weeks, Sarah felt like she had her marketing efforts under control again.

Just as Sarah was feeling relieved that her non-human clicks were being filtered out, she stumbled upon another interesting perspective: not all AI or machine clicks were necessarily bad.

In fact, some marketers viewed these automated interactions as an opportunity to boost their domain’s sending reputation with email service providers (ESPs). The more "engagement" an email receives, whether from humans or machines, the better it might look in the eyes of ESPs, potentially improving inbox placement rates.

Sarah realized that while non-human clicks could distort her metrics, they could also have a silver lining. Higher click rates, even if generated by security software, could signal to ESPs that her emails were being engaged with, reducing the likelihood of them being marked as spam. This increased activity could, in turn, help establish her domain as a trusted sender, improving email deliverability in future campaigns.

It was a tricky balance. While Sarah needed accurate data to measure real human engagement, these machine clicks might still play a role in maintaining her domain’s reputation.

Keep reading on the Popular Content page for more email marketing tips, tricks, and strategies!