Is this Possible?! - Email Scanner Logic Diagram

[jaked4ge]

We are trying to give our sales team accurate lists of leads... We have been really struggling with email scanners.

This is the logic that I want to go for but I am not entirely sure how to set it up as I don't see any options for click time stamps in Marketo.

If there is someone who could explain a way to apply this logic with either using Smart Campaigns or even creating changing tags applied to a contact it would help. Thank you - Jacob

[Katja_Keesom]

Are you saying that you would treat the entire lead record as a bot based on this logic? Not sure I follow that logic, as a lead can have a mix of human and bot activity. I think the key would be with identifying which activities come from a mail scanner rather than excluding a lead based on a single mail scanner activity.

Marketo of course now provides several options to identify bot activities individually and as I understand more are on their way. Clicking a honey pot link is not the only way to do so. Of course this is not and will probably never be 100% airtight, but between adding your own honeypot process and activating the Marketo options for identifying bot activity you will be able to have your campaigns respond to human activity only to a better degree.

[jaked4ge]

In my experience with email scanners, all of the links in the email are clicked in a very short amount of time, lets say 15 seconds.

My logic was that once the hidden bot link that I attach is clicked, that the lead is flagged as a bot. If  they click any link after  they click the bot link (with lets say a 1 minute wait step for good measure) I can assume with confidence that click is a real interaction. I want to be able to capture those people.

Does that make sense? Thank you for responding. If there is another thread with this logic let me know.

[Katja_Keesom]

As there is a lag in the activities being registered in Marketo, you won't be able to capture this behaviour reliably with smart campaigns, but the new proximity pattern implemented by Marketo does a pretty decent job at it.

[SanfordWhiteman]

---

In my experience with email scanners, all of the links in the email are clicked in a very short amount of time, lets say 15 seconds.

---

That’s a partial description of what scanners do. But the ones that are effective* are integrated with endpoint protection software and security proxies, so they only follow (pre-follow) links that the person has deliberately interacted with.

*because it’s trivial for a malefactor to fool a system that only follows links when the email is first delivered

[SanfordWhiteman]

One of Marketo’s own tactics involves a decoy link/honeypot so it doesn’t make sense to do that yourself.

Really I don’t think people should be trying cobble things together anymore, turn on Bot Detection and then try to get the team to add/perfect features is the way to go.

[Katja_Keesom]

I am not sure whether that one was actually implemented. I do see it in the overview in admin, but so far have not seen any bot activities captured there across the instances I work with and I also do not see any setting to activate it.