Bots or Real MQLs?

[mmcvey]

Hi all,

We have implemented a prospect scoring model within the past year to keep track of the activity our prospects are performing within the context of a nurture program. We're using a tiered system, so we go from Level A to Level F based on the priority level, so the threshold to MQL is as follows:

Level A: at least 30

Level B: at least 40

Level C: at least 50

(we are no longer allowing Level F to MQL)

At face value the model seems to be working fine; however, when I dig into the MQLs, it looks like majority of them are not what I would consider "true" MQLs -- my main concern being the amount of clicks within the same minute within the emails (ie -- bots). 

In our behavior triggers, we have added the filter constraint "Is Bot Activity" = false, and when Marketo rolled out the updates to the bot filtration, we enabled the following, but are still running in to this issue:

Has anyone run into something similar with your scoring models? If so, how did you filter out the bot activity effectively? Would anyone recommend modifying any of the above?

Open to any suggestions or ideas!

Thanks so much!

[cookiemonstersa]

Following to see what people have to say! 

I wonder if email clicks and opens are even worth keeping in a scoring program at this point.

It might be time to switch to visits webpage, then (change score +1)

[Ishita_Chawra]

Hi @mmcvey 

I found some documentation on filtering Bot activities which might be useful:

• Email bot activity feature in Marketo
• Filtering Email Bot Activity | Adobe Marketo Engage

All email bot settings look ok to me.

While I would also suggest looking into how and how often you are scoring your MQLs. Knowing your ideal MQL qualifiers and updating scoring process might be helpful. 

[Balkar_Singh]

Assuming if you have your smart campaign settings to score people every time someone clicks the emails, try considering changing the campaign settings to qualify people once every day or every hour, instead of every time.  That might be causing to count a spike in bot-activity and skew the scores.