10X + Inflated click rate over the past 2 weeks

[Emilia_Chionce3]

Hi Community, 

We see super inflated click rates in the past 2 weeks ( e.g. over 2% click rate now, versus 0,2% in february).

We experience them within several Marketo instances and did not yet figure out the cause. Marketo Support provided a general response on what bot clicks are but did not confirm a root cause of the sudden change. 

We see that they have in common a number of 3 consecutive clicks right before the email is delivered. 

Did anyone else experience this? 

Thank you, 

Emilia

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's very common. The more of your audience moves from lower-powered email security layers to higher-powered mail scanners, the more clicks you'll have.

[emiliac]

Hey Sandy, 

Thank you for your response.

The gap is very high, for March sends only; I actually suspect there is an issue on the Marketo side, and wanted to see if anyone else is encountering it?

Here is how the click rate suddenly increased, in 2 separate Marketo instances:

Best, 

Emilia

[SanfordWhiteman]

The final percentage doesn't seem that high at all. The original percentage strikes me as extremely low. Of course the other number of interest is the raw number of clicks (effect size) not only the percentage.

[Emilia_Chionce3]

Hey Sandy, 

Thank you for your response here. The audience is >100K recipients. 

In terms of numbers, the click rate increased from 100-150 to 1,300-1800. 

Have a good week,

Emilia

[SanfordWhiteman]

That just sounds like a bunch of people changed to a new enterprise mail scanner.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Doesn't look like such a high percentage at all; the original percentage seems very low. Of course the missing metric is the raw number of clicks we're talking about.

[CarrieTaylor]

Hello Emilia - 

We are seeing the same thing with March as well.  While I understand what Sandford and Katja were saying about mail scanners, we have had that before too but nothing like what we were seeing March.  I just think it is interesting that others are having the same increase during the same time period.

Thanks,

Carrie

[Caroline_Davids]

Hey Emilia,

We have been experiencing the same issue as you.  At the end of February, we started seeing extremely high numbers of clicks on our emails, including 1,000+ clicks on links to our social media pages which is not common for us. As you mentioned, we are seeing activity history of Email Delivered and 3 link clicks all at the same time.  Marketo Support also shared information with us about scanner bots and suggested that was likely the cause.  

We are still experiencing this issue with all of our emails and are working on an alternative solution for reporting.  From what I've seen in other posts in the Community, others have tried the pulling Smart Lists using filters of "Clicks Link in Email" AND "Visited Web Page".  While this number is not 100% accurate, it does appear to be closer to what our click rates were prior to the inflation.  

We are still testing this method out but I thought I'd at least share with you our experience as well.  If there is any update or if you've found a better solution, please share! 

Thanks!

Caroline

[Emilia_Chionce3]

Hey Caroline, 

Thank you very much for your response here, really appreciate it. It was strange to me that no one faced this lately, and that not even Marketo could confirm it, whilst I've seen this sudden spike in several instances already.

And thanks for your recommendation. I will look into proceeding the same. 

Have a great week, 

Emilia