Hidden Links In Emails For Bots

[ttomasko43]

Trying to figure out if there is a way to use hidden links in an email to see if bots click the hidden link to filter out bot activity vs real engagement. There is an ask to use email engagement of clicking on certain links to transition that person to a specific nurture based on their interaction with email links, however this would be an issue if bots are clicking email links and it wasn't a true interaction. Any suggestions?

[alludoalex]

Here's a discussion on why you wouldn't necessarily want to add a hidden link manually to the email itself from a 2018 thread.

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/bot-checks-in-emails/td-p/153171

However, there are new features that help to implement what you're hoping to get as an outcome:

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/filtering-email-bot-activity-feature-v2/ba-p/322774/page...

Let us know if that works for your use-case!

[uditmathur]

Hi,

As per best practices its never advised to use email opens & clicks as parameters for transitioning leads. Because of the Bot activities its always a challenge to differentiate Bot activity from a genuine human activity.

Although, with Marketo you can filter out majority of Bot activities but its still not 100% full proof.

I will suggest to transition your leads to your Nurture programs instead of using clicks use Form fills or content download as criteria, this will also help you to present your leads with specific contents more personalized to their interest.

[Chargotra]

Agree with Udit!

In your email marketing platform, ensure you can track clicks on both the visible and hidden links. If the hidden link is clicked, you can flag that interaction as potentially from a bot and exclude it from triggering further actions like transitioning to a specific campaign.

Implementation Steps:

1. Create hidden links in your email template.
2. Track clicks on both visible and hidden links.
3. Analyze click patterns to identify and filter out bot activity.