How to Auto Purge Bot Email Events Caused by the Spam Filter Software

Running mass email campaigns through Salesforce can be a double-edged sword. While email marketing is crucial for outreach, it often comes with challenges, particularly when it comes to bot email events. These false email events—triggered by spam filter software—can distort your campaign metrics and hinder your ability to gauge success accurately.

MassMailer makes this process easier. With its user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, you can effortlessly create visually appealing email templates. The platform also allows you to track crucial metrics such as opens, clicks, and bounces. Moreover, its email verification feature boosts deliverability rates, ensuring that messages reach their intended recipients while significantly reducing bounce rates.

In this blog, we’ll explore how to effectively set up a mechanism within Salesforce using MassMailer to detect and purge these pesky bot email events automatically.

What Are Bot Email Events and What Triggers Them?

Bot email events are false email interactions triggered by the automated actions of spam filter software. These events—such as opens, clicks, or unsubscribes—can skew campaign metrics, leading marketers to misinterpret their email marketing effectiveness.

These events typically occur when spam filters scan incoming emails and automatically click on any embedded links to verify their safety before they reach the recipient’s inbox. As a result, these interactions are registered even before the actual recipient engages with the email, distorting the true performance data.

Bot email events are an industry-wide issue that is not limited to the Salesforce ecosystem. No systems are currently in place to accurately identify and purge these email events.

How to Auto Purge Email Bot Events Within Massmailer?

To effectively utilize MassMailer’s auto-purge mechanism for email bot events, it’s important to understand its limitations and underlying assumptions.

First, this method only applies to HTML-based email templates; if you’re using plain text emails, this approach won’t be effective.

The primary assumption guiding this method is that any event triggered within 30 seconds of email delivery is likely caused by a spam filter rather than actual recipient engagement. While there may be exceptions to this rule, the approach still offers a robust safeguard against bot email events, helping to maintain the accuracy of your campaign metrics.

Understanding these factors is crucial before diving into the setup process for the auto-purge functionality within MassMailer.

The Mechanism Behind The Autopurge Functionality

MassMailer’s auto-purge functionality uses a hidden link within your HTML email template that serves as a trap for spam filters.

To enable it, you will have to go to MassMailer’s Template builder tab, select the template you want to auto-purge email bot events on, scroll down to the HTML section of the template, and add the following line of code to it.

<div class=”our-class”><a style=”display:none;” href=”https://yourdomain.com/mmhiddenpage”></a></div>

Once done, save the changes to the template. 

 

 

Here’s how the mechanism works:

Spam filters typically scan the entire email, including any embedded links, to ensure they are safe before delivering the email to the recipient’s inbox. The display is set to none on the HTML code; this link will not be visible to your recipient. MassMailer will identify and register any events triggered by this link as an email bot event.

After identifying the event, the platform will then purge any other false interactions (like clicks, opens, and unsubscribes) that occur within a certain timeframe of the email delivery (30 seconds is the default set on the platform, but this is configurable).

However, it’s important to note that events like processed or delivered statuses will not be deleted, as these events represent a successful email delivery to the recipient’s server.
 

Key Points to Be Careful About with the Hidden Link

While the hidden link technique is an effective strategy for filtering out bot-generated email events, there are several important factors to consider during setup:

• Check Functionality of the Embedded Link: Ensure that the embedded link is a fully functional URL that redirects to your website’s main domain. Broken links or redirects to invalid pages can negatively impact email delivery and harm your sender’s credibility.
• Analyze Accuracy of HTML Code: Verify that your HTML code is accurate so that it can be detected by spam filters. Testing the functionality of the hidden link before launching your mass email campaigns is crucial to avoid any issues.
• Avoid Overuse of Hidden Links: While the hidden link method can be effective, overusing it may raise red flags with spam filters. Implementing too many hidden links could trigger spam detection algorithms, resulting in your emails being flagged or sent to the spam folder.
• Regularly Monitor Metrics: After implementing the hidden link strategy, consistently monitor your campaign metrics. This helps you assess the effectiveness of the auto-purge feature and ensures that it is accurately filtering out bot-generated events without mistakenly eliminating legitimate interactions.

By keeping these considerations in mind, you can effectively utilize the hidden link method while minimizing potential pitfalls.

How Often Does the Auto-Purge Functionality Run?

Once you’ve set up the hidden link mechanism, MassMailer continuously monitors your email events for any bot-generated actions.

Another key point to note is that this is not an on-demand feature. The bot event detection mechanism runs in real-time once the hidden link is clicked, but the deletion of subsequent bot events happens according to a set schedule.

MassMailer also offers the functionality to manually delete bot email events. You can find this functionality here:

MassMailer Setup -> Tools -> Manual Purge -> Basic

t allows you to select a date range between when you want to purge bot email events and allows you to select precisely which events you want to purge, i.e Open, Click, Unsubscribe, and Group Unsubscribe.
You also have the option to alter the duration from when these events were triggered post-delivery, but MassMailer recommends leaving it at the default value of 30 seconds.