Bots Impacting Lead Scoring.

[MarthaColeman]

I have an engagement program running with lead scoring that is tracking opens, clicks and form fills. Once the lead hits MQL, it triggers a notification to the sales team who is following up with these leads. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the activity is non-human (email security filters or link-scanning bots).

A few recommendations have been given, but I'm not completely satisfied with them. 

• Honeypot (Doesn't make sense for us)
• Bot Activity Filter (Is not flagging these bots)

My major concern here is that sales reps are having a negative experience with marketing bringing them warm leads if they keep turning out to be bots. It's very important to our team to have a strong relationship with our sales teams so I don't want this to negatively impact their view of the tool and marketing.

Has anyone implemented wait steps or constraints into their filters or flow steps that have been helpful in avoiding scoring this activity? Thanks!

[EllenSchwier]

I agree with the comments about NOT scoring based on opens/clicks because this is very unreliable data (and often bots). If you need extra protections on your form fills, you can consider the CAPTCHA option.

However, you might also consider scoring based on web page visits. Often the bots don't stay on the page long enough for a page view to register...or you could consider only scoring if a second page is visited.

I can understand the desire to not gate all your content behind a form, but opens/clicks are not a great way of measuring warm leads. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

---

Often the bots don't stay on the page long enough for a page view to register...

That’s not exactly the case. Either the mail scanner runs JavaScript (and it turn runs Munchkin) or not. Vanishingly unlikely it has anything to do with how long the embedded browser waits before closing.

[EllenSchwier]

Good to know, thanks for the clarification. 🙂

[uditmathur]

Hi @MarthaColeman ,

This is not a unique issue you are facing & many threads have discussed this before.

Marketo Bot filter works very decently for filtering bot activities but is not 100% fail safe.

Regarding your Lead scoring, it is always recommended NOT to use opens & clicks as definitive human action, as may spam filters click & opens email for scanning.

I will recommend to modify your lead scoring to NOT consider open/clicks  & only score on form fills this will give you more reliable data on customer actions & better MQL leads.

Also if you can share screenshot of your current Bot filters setting it can assist more to understand.

Hope this Helps 😊