Detecting Automated Email Interactions from Bots
Email clients pre-fetch content and store it on their servers to improve the user experience by reducing load times. Unfortunately, this causes false events created by bots. When possible, information about the bot is stamped on the Email Activity object to help organizations distinguish false events from real events triggered by recipients.
By detecting bot activity, organizations can gain a clearer picture of genuine recipient engagement with emails. With more accurate engagement data, organizations can identify which emails resonate most with their audience and make data-driven decisions about email content strategies.
Who can use this feature?
- Approved Email Admin Users, End Users — Browser
- Viewing Automated Email Interactions
- Users require an Approved Email license
Configuring Detection of Automated Email Interactions for
All Users
To configure this feature:
- Ensure Configuring Approved Email is complete.
- Navigate to Admin > Users & Groups > Permission Sets.
- Select the appropriate permission set.
- Select Objects.
- Grant users Edit access to the Bot field on the Email Activity object.
- Navigate to Admin > Configuration > Objects.
- Add the Bot field to the appropriate layout on the Email Activity object to allow users to view the data.
Viewing Automated Email Interactions from Bots as
All Users
The Bot field on the Email Activity object is blank when Mailgun does not detect bot activity, indicating the recipient interacted with the email.
When there is an opened or clicked email activity that Mailgun detects was triggered by a bot, the Bot field on the Email Activity object is stamped with one of the following values:
- apple - Indicates an Apple MPP bot
- gmail - Indicates a Gmail bot
- generic - Indicates an unknown bot (most likely a firewall or anti virus scan)
Business Admins can create a report on the Sent Email and Email Activity objects to view and filter values for multiple email activities. For more information, see What are Reports?
