Think You Don’t Have a Bot Problem? Run This 5-Minute Test

If you’re proud of your email click rates, you might want to sit down.

Across financial services, we’re seeing that 53% of email clicks and 46% of email opens are generated by email security scanners, not professional investors.

That’s not a rounding error.

Security scanners are doing their job. Unfortunately, they’re also distorting your marketing data.

But you don’t need to take our word for it. Run this five-minute test on your last campaign.

The 5-Minute Metric Test

Open your most recent email campaign and look for the following patterns.

1. Instant Clicks

We’d all like to think professional investors drop everything and click the moment our email arrives.

In reality, most aren’t that fast. Bots are.

If clicks spike within a minute or two of sending, you’re probably seeing security scanners at work.

2. Every Link Clicked

The same applies to the links they click.

If a contact clicks the hero banner, multiple body links, the preferences form and the legal disclaimer… all within seconds… that’s impressive.

It’s just unlikely to be a professional investor.

3. High Click Rates, Low Website Engagement

Now compare your click-through rate with your website analytics.

If clicks look strong but meaningful page engagement is low, something doesn’t add up.

Most analytics platforms (including Google Analytics) rely on JavaScript to track page views. Many security scanners and bots don’t execute JavaScript. Which means they can register as an email click… without ever appearing as a real website visit.

In other words, your email looks popular. Your website does not.

4. Repeated Technical Patterns

Review the technical signals behind the clicks.

Look at IP addresses and geolocation. If the same “contact” appears to click from London, then from Singapore seconds later, you’re probably not witnessing impressive global mobility.

You’re witnessing automated scanning.

5. Poor Lead Flow

And lastly — has your Head of Sales stopped offering to buy coffee?

When “highly engaged” contacts repeatedly fail to respond, sales teams notice.

Time gets wasted chasing signals that looked strong in the dashboard but never materialize into conversations.

Pipeline confidence quietly drops. Marketing credibility takes a subtle hit.

If bots are driving engagement, your lead flow isn’t improving. It’s being distorted.

Why This Matters

Inflated engagement doesn’t just distort reporting. It distorts decisions.

Lead scoring weakens. Automation misfires. Sales wastes time. CRM data degrades.

Eventually, trust between marketing and sales starts to slip.

And in financial services, trust is everything.

The Platform Reality

The reality is simple. Most marketing automation platforms weren’t built for today’s volume of security scanning and automated traffic.

Filtering, if it exists, often happens:

• After reporting
• Using static blocklists
• Via temporary IP blocking
• Without behavioral pattern detection

Identifying bot activity in reports doesn’t prevent the damage.

By the time you spot it, automation has already fired and lead scores have already shifted.

The Difference Clean Data Makes

Identifying bots is one thing. Preventing them from distorting your data is another. That’s why we created BotShield.

BotShield blocks bot-driven opens and clicks before they enter reporting or trigger automation.

• AI-based pattern detection
• Continuously managed global blocklists
• 35% average improvement in data accuracy
• 52% more fake clicks detected in our latest upgrade

The outcome isn’t lower performance. It’s honest performance. And honest performance drives better decisions.

Want to See What’s Real?

Curious what your engagement looks like without the robots? Try StoneShot with a free trial.

No obligation. No hard sell. Just clean data.

And possibly a slightly less flattering open rate.