Spam filters registering clicks?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Which you should always try to avoid - and instead, use this fantastic technique: http://blog.teknkl.com/stop-using-direct-download-links-unless-you-like-losing-tracking/

[Benjamin_Ortiz1]

So we have our CTA buttons link out to a Marketo hosted landing page - is it safe to say the "IF clicks link: 'MKTO landing page'" + "Visited web page: 'MKTO landing page'" combination will catch 100% of the human clicks and exclude the bots?

I ran a test during our last email and the exact flow I had set up is:

TRIGGER: 'Clicks Link in email; link is: pages.xyz.com....' FLOW: 'Wait 5 minutes, Request Campaign' >

CAMPAIGN IS REQUESTED: Marketo Flow action' VISITED WEB PAGE is pages.xyz.com > Send Alert

Looking at the statistic we had 47 run through this campaign and 217 log a click on that link with no web page visit. It is hard to believe that we had 217 bot clicks...this leads me to believe the Marketo tracking on the landing page is not accurate?

I apologize if I have repeated any issues already in the comments, I am trying to follow all of the threads on this topic.

Thanks,

[SanfordWhiteman]

So we have our CTA buttons link out to a Marketo hosted landing page - is it safe to say the "IF clicks link: 'MKTO landing page'" + "Visited web page: 'MKTO landing page'" combination will catch 100% of the human clicks and exclude the bots?

No, because mail scanners that are most accurate/robust will load the next page with JS enabled.

(If they didn't do this, how would they know if the page would be redirected to a phishing site?)

[Lucho_Soto]

We place utm tags in all of our emails, so we use this:

Smart List:

Visited Web Page Trigger: any

Querystring contains: [unique utm tags minus the question mark at the beginning]

Flow:

Change program status to clicked

We've been using this for over a year now and I have yet to see a fake click with this method.

[SanfordWhiteman]

We've been using this for over a year now and I have yet to see a fake click with this method.

You would have no way of knowing if you had. That's the idea.

[Benjamin_Ortiz1]

I see what you're saying - I guess my question should be, is using the above filter/trigger combo the most reliable solution known today to attempt to filter out bot clicks? and are there any known issues with tracking marketo hosted pages where I would miss out on real clicks by using this filter/trigger combo?

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you only use this for links that run Munchkin (i.e. direct binary downloads won't have a Visited Web Page) then you will only miss people who use tracking protection plugins/features.

I don't consider there to be any reliable detection method for mail scanner clicks, for good reason.