3 Spooky Email Click Bots to Beware of

Bots are a well-known scourge on Twitter and Facebook, but they’re also a problem on email lists. Even bots that aren’t explicitly trying to compromise your systems represent a serious risk, as they can inflate performance numbers, muddy targeting efforts, and lead brands to make tactical or strategic changes that serve bots rather than human subscribers.

Let’s explore the 3 forms email click bots come in, with each requiring its own potential remedies:

Beneficial email click bots

There are helpful and positive contributor click bots. For example, some email click bots scan every link for malware before passing the email along to the intended recipient.

Thankfully, most beneficial bots come from security companies like Barracuda and McAfee and clearly announce themselves. This allows the vast majority of email service providers to automatically filter these bot-related clicks so they don’t affect marketer’s results.

Most of the bots that don’t identify themselves fall into one of the two remaining email click bot categories.

Malicious email click bots

Some bots are harmful by design. They’re created to explore, discover, and exploit vulnerabilities. For example, Spamhaus blocklisted many well-known, popular brands in 2016 because malicious bots entered the email addresses of tons of unwilling people into the brands’ open email signup forms. As a result, brands flooded those people’s inboxes with emails.

In a recent Oracle Modern Marketing Blog article, Daniel Deneweth, Head of Email Deliverability Services at Oracle CX Marketing Consulting, recommended that companies do the following to protect themselves from malicious bot attacks:

1. Adding CAPTCHA to all web-based email signup forms.
2. Adding a hidden form field to all web-based signup forms.
3. Adopting a double opt-in permission standard, where appropriate.
4. Tracking each subscriber acquisition source closely.
5. Implementing an alert system for spikes in the number of signups coming through any one subscriber acquisition source.
6. Creating a “new registrant, non-responder” rule.
7. Applying segmentation criteria to limit the number of emails you send to unengaged subscribers.

The next email click bots fall into a category that lies between beneficial and malicious.

Exploitive email click bots

These bots can be…

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