Introduction
Bots can sometimes cause problems in email campaigns. This article explains what bots are and why they can be an issue.
Why Are Bots Causing Issues?
When you send emails, security services like Mimecast, Barracuda, Microsoft, and Google, along with spam filters, check the links in the emails. Sometimes, these checks are so intense that they can cause excessive load, leading to problems for ESPs and your websites.
Why Is This Happening Now?
This has been happening for a long time because of bulk email communications. In the last year though, these security checks have intensified and became more frequent. The exact reasons for these changes are not clear because security companies don't share the details in a public forum.
Measures to Prevent Bot-Related Issues
We are taking steps to reduce the impact of bots. These include:
- Improving Handling of Requests: Making sure our infrastructure can handle sudden and excessive link requests.
- Expanding Bot Suppression Algorithms: Updating our systems to better filter out suspected bot activity from email statistics.
Other Important Information
- Widespread Impact: This issue affects all bulk email senders, not just Spotler.
- Detection Challenges: It's hard to detect and stop bots because their activity is random and unpredictable.
- Indiscriminate Activity: Bots don't care about the sender's reputation; they affect everyone.
- Sophisticated Attacks: Bots are getting smarter, using different IP addresses and metadata, and attacking at random times.
- Retrospective Suppression: We analyze data after the fact to filter out bot activity. Since we can't detect individual clicks in real-time, all traffic—including bot activity—is forwarded to its destination, which can impact website performance if there's a sudden surge in traffic. This can also be caused by suspected spam traps in your data.
How Can Spotler Help?
To help you further, we offer data cleansing services to ensure your data is accurate and up-to-date. Additionally, our consultancy services can provide a deep dive into your email marketing strategy, helping you optimise your campaigns and improve overall performance.
Conclusion
Understanding and managing bot activity is important for keeping your email campaigns running smoothly. We're committed to improving our bot detection systems and giving you the tools to manage suspected bot activity effectively.
If you need any further information then please reach out to your Account Manager.