Filtering email bot activity [September 2022 Release]

[Sreekanth_Reddy]

Hello Nation!

As most of you know we have launched "Proximity Pattern" a new identification method for email bot activities. After 2 months of observation and analysis we have seen great results with the proximity pattern. We have seen proximity pattern is able to identify 3x - 5x more bot activities compared to IAB list. Following are the changes we have launched this week:

1. Update to Proximity pattern algorithm: 
   • If there are clicks or open from the same lead at the same time i.e exact duplicates will not be considered in the algorithm. Also, if you have duplicates only one activity will be logged into your subscription
   • To improve the accuracy of identifying bot activities we reduced the proximity pattern logic from 2 seconds to 0 seconds i.e when more than 2 activities happen at the same time i.e under 1 second, they are identified as bots.
2. "Filter out" option is now available for the Proximity pattern:
   • Now you can choose to completely eliminate the activities that are identified by the proximity pattern

Related links:

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/filtering-email-bot-activity-feature-faqs/bc-p/328547#M2...

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

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-documents/filtering-email-bot-activity-feature-latest-release/...

[Katja_Keesom]

Good developments Sreekanth! Looking forward to the hidden link being added as well. And  of course the reporting developments.

[roadshowhannah]

Thank you for sharing @Sreekanth_Reddy  this is an excellent update in Marketo! 

[Tom_Patterson]

Great stuff @Sreekanth_Reddy - thank  you for sharing!

[alexmosca]

This is great @Sreekanth_Reddy! One additional scenario that I'm seeing frequently is that some email recipients will be delivered our email, and then instantly as soon as the email is delivered, we're seeing click activities logged for just about every link we have in the email on person records. We're commonly seeing that this happens for recipients at the same company, so I'm assuming it is a security feature implemented by their org. 

Are there plans to update proximity pattern filtering to filter out instances as I described above in the future? We're having a difficult time finding a way to do that at my company and it's having a big impact on our email metrics.

[Katja_Keesom]

I would say that that is exactly what the proximity pattern currently does...

[alexmosca]

We're seeing cases where that isn't happening. It seems to be catching some, but not all instances of activity like this occurring.

Here's an example we saw this week where the email was delivered and over a dozen clicks were logged immediately after. Bot Activity was False for every one of these "Click Email" activities. This seems to be the exact situation that should be marked as Proximity Pattern bot activity, but it doesn't appear that Marketo was able to identify it as such.

 

[Katja_Keesom]

Hmm, the pattern now looks for activity within the same second, but the below scenario could be spread across multiple seconds. Maybe the pattern needs to be extended to a high number of clicks on different links within a slightly extended amount of time.

You always have to balance carefully that you catch this type of behaviour without inadvertently catching human behaviour.

[Sreekanth_Reddy]

Absolutely! You are spot on with our next line thought. Do you think we should provide option to the customers:

a) Have the option to select the seconds difference 

or 

b) Have the option to select from 0second or 1 second or 2 second difference

[Katja_Keesom]

Hmm, it could make sense to give flexibility to tailor it per instance, but then I would take two parameters into account. One would be the time frame, where giving a few concrete options I think would be best. That way you avoid an admin with limited knowledge on the topic setting it to too broad a window. The second parameter would be the number of activities to take into account. The example provided shows many clicks in close proximity, which most of the time would be something like all links in the footer. That is a clear sign it is not human behaviour, but depends on the standard set up of footers etc.

Another option would be to also specify some specific urls to include in the pattern. I have one use case where the footer as a standard contains links to the privacy policy, terms of use, fraud awareness and several other legalese. If someone clicks at least two of those in close proximity I know enough.

On a different note, I do see in the admin section that there is a counter for hidden link click activities captured, but it is set to 0 wherever I look. I also do not see the option to log these in the toggles. Is there something I missed there?