Filtering Email Bot Activity Feature Updates

[Sreekanth_Reddy]

Since we launched the Email bot activity filtering feature on May 12th, 2021, we have seen tremendous adoption and following are some interesting stats:

3500+ customers have enabled and using this feature

Avg. 2Million+ bot activities per week are being captured (across all customers)

1500+ customers receive more than 100 bot activities every week

We have curated a few FAQs w.r.t to this feature in this link. Although these are great numbers, we totally understand there is a lot more to be done. For the next version of this feature, we are researching on what are the most common patterns that can help us identify an activity as a bot activity. So far in my discussions with few customers, following are few common patterns that were highlighted:

• Open and clicks are being logged before Email delivery
• Clicks and opens are nearly at the same time
• Clicks and Opens are logged within the same minute from the delivery
• All links click within an email happening nearly at the same time

I am curious to know what all other patterns you have observed to identify a bot activity, that you would want Marketo to consider introducing in the next versions

[Vinay_Kumar]

Clicked link in email, but not opened email.

[AndrewWalkerDS]

I don't believe we can say clicks without opens is 100% a bot pattern though. Here is a screenshot of this pattern on an email I sent myself in Outlook. Outlook clients do not download images by default. I can read the email and click on it, but no open activity will be logged since the pixel tracker was not downloaded. I can click on one of the links in the email and Marketo will track the click activity without the open. This is human activity and shouldn't be filtered out. 

[Vinay_Kumar]

That's correct. Here, we need to use constraints like Min number of times, Date of activity, etc. 

[AndrewWalkerDS]

Another pattern I have observed is when sending an email to multiple email addresses at the same domain, the patterns you have noted above regarding timing of the open / click will also happen across every recipient with the same email domain.

[Sreekanth_Reddy]

Hi Everyone, here is an update of enhancements we made in the March release - https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/filtering-email-bot-activity-feature-v2/ba-p/322774