Of course, as a marketer, you start to sweat when you suddenly see a double-digit unsubscribe rate after sending out a newsletter. But you become even more confused when the opening and click rates are also sensationally high. And you become completely confused when you see that some recipients have clicked on 10 different links within 5 seconds or that all recipients of a domain have suddenly unsubscribed.
So? What's the reason?
The answer to this very confusing situation is: bots. More specifically, firewalls and virus checkers.Unsubscribe
Some security systems are now equipped with so-called link checkers. These click on every URL found in a mailing in order to prevent phishing and other attack attempts.
These systems become a problem especially when the unsubscribe process for your newsletter is one-click based - that is, the unsubscription occurs by clicking on the link. The same applies to one-click based double opt-in emails . If every link is checked and called up, this also means that the unsubscription is automatically triggered.
This often happens without the user noticing. It is also not uncommon for the process to go unnoticed for a long time or even completely unnoticed by the sender of the newsletter. Even some of the largest German publishers have already been confronted with this problem.
Who is primarily affected?
NetworkThe sector most affected by far is B2B mailings . This is because phishing attacks on private individuals "only" affect their cell phones and/or private computers. Successful attacks on company networks can have much more fatal consequences. One careless employee is enough to give hackers access to the intranet. This can very quickly cause damage running into the millions.
That is why IT managers in companies place particular emphasis on the best possible protection against attacks and use appropriate firewalls and virus checkers, some of which also check all links in emails as standard.
What can you do about it?
The answer is quite simple. Switch from a one-click australia phone number data unsubscribe process to a double-confirmed opt-out . In this case, the person unsubscribing simply has to click the unsubscribe button again on the landing page, thereby confirming that the action is being carried out by a natural person. This avoids the risk of automatic bot unsubscribe and offers your recipient an additional psychological hurdle when it comes to unsubscribing from your newsletter.
Don’t worry, confirmed opt-outs are fully within the scope of the GDPR.
In a second step, evaluate the unsubscriptions of the last 6 months. If you notice certain domains where all links were accessed almost at the same time as delivery and an unsubscription is associated with this, then this is very likely to indicate the problem described above. In this case, you should contact the individual recipients or the domain operator and ask whether they would like to be added back to the mailing list. Important: You should not go too far back in your reactivation efforts, as a permission expires if it has not been used for a long time.
Last but not least – consider that bot clicks influence your metrics and may manipulate the course of your campaign. Especially if you have a high proportion of B2B recipients in your mailing list.
The AGNITAS EMM automatically ensures that your measurable links are structured in such a way that bots cannot or only with difficulty distinguish between them. The scanners are convinced that all links in your mailing have the same goal and therefore ideally do not pay much attention to them.