The Hidden Impact of Bots on Email Marketing: What Act CRM, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact Users Should Know

Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for engaging customers and growing a business. Whether you’re using Act CRM, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or any other service, you’re probably watching your open rates, click-throughs, and conversions like a hawk. But how accurate are those numbers?

How do Email Bots Impact Your Email Marketing Efforts?

In recent years, the rise of bots—particularly security bots and spam filters—has significantly impacted email marketing statistics. If you’ve noticed suspiciously high open rates, or if your numbers seem too good to be true, there may be more going on behind the scenes than you realize.

Let’s take a closer look at how bots interact with email campaigns, what they do to the statistics, and whether email service providers (ESPs) have an incentive to let these inflated metrics slide.

What Are Bots Doing to Your Email Campaigns?

When most people think of bots, they imagine malicious software scraping websites or sending spam. But in the world of email marketing, the most common bots aren’t out to harm—they’re part of security systems designed to protect recipients from threats. Firewalls, spam filters, and antivirus software often include bots that “check” emails before they reach the inbox.

These bots can do things like:

• Open the email to scan for malicious content
• Download images (which often triggers a pixel-based open tracking event)
• Click on links to test them for malware

Unfortunately, from your ESP’s perspective, those actions often look identical to real user behavior.

How Bots Inflate Open Rates

Most ESPs use a tiny, invisible image embedded in your email—often referred to as a tracking pixel—to measure when an email is opened. When that image is loaded, it counts as an “open.”

The problem is, when a security bot pre-scans an email, it usually loads that pixel. So even if the recipient never sees your message, the open gets logged. That means your statistics may show 1,000 opens when only 700 people actually read the message.

Click Rates Can Be Affected Too

While open rate inflation is the most common issue, bots can also inflate click-through rates. Some corporate spam filters are programmed to follow every link in an email to ensure the destination is safe. This behavior registers as a click in your ESP—even though the person never clicked anything.

For marketers who rely on triggered automations (e.g., “send a follow-up to people who clicked”), this can cause problems. It may activate workflows based on bot clicks rather than real interest, wasting both time and effort.

How Big of a Problem Is This?

The scope of the problem depends on your audience.

If you’re sending emails to large companies, financial institutions, or government agencies, you’re far more likely to see inflated stats. These organizations tend to use advanced security tools that aggressively scan incoming emails.

If your audience is mostly made up of individuals or small business owners, the impact might be less significant. Still, even consumer-level email providers like Gmail and Outlook are getting more aggressive with security, so bot interactions are on the rise everywhere.

In a study by Litmus, marketers reported that as much as 10–30% of their opens might be false positives due to security bots. For campaigns sent to corporate domains, the percentage can be even higher.

What About Act CRM, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact?

All three of these services rely on pixel-based tracking and link-click tracking to measure engagement. While each platform has its own algorithms and techniques for filtering out suspicious behavior, none of them can completely eliminate bot interactions from their reports.

Act CRM (with Act! Marketing Automation)

Act! Marketing Automation integrates directly with the Act CRM database and gives users tools to track opens and clicks. Like other services, AMA uses tracking pixels and logged URL redirects. Currently, there is no built-in way to distinguish between bot opens and real ones, though users can manually filter by behavior patterns (e.g., multiple opens within seconds of sending).

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has implemented some measures to help identify bot activity, especially for larger users on premium plans. They may flag suspicious engagement patterns or filter out link clicks that occur within milliseconds of sending. But again, the filtering is not perfect. Mailchimp’s analytics are generally optimistic unless you audit them closely.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact also tracks opens and clicks using pixels and redirect URLs. While they provide decent reporting tools, they don’t currently offer advanced filtering for bot activity in most accounts. If you’re seeing higher-than-expected engagement, especially among contacts from large companies, bots may be inflating your numbers.

Do Email Service Providers Benefit From Inflated Stats?

This is where things get a little tricky. On the surface, inflated engagement metrics might seem like a bad thing for ESPs. After all, clients want accuracy, right?

But there’s also a quiet incentive: good numbers make users feel successful. When a business owner sees a 40% open rate, they feel great—even if the real number is closer to 25%. They’re more likely to keep sending emails, upgrade to a higher-tier plan, or recommend the service to others.

It’s fair to say that most major ESPs don’t intentionally inflate numbers. But if the metrics are fuzzy and optimistic, they’re unlikely to rush to fix that—especially if customers aren’t complaining.

Who Keeps These Services Honest?

The short answer: not many people.

There’s no regulatory body that audits email open rates across platforms. Unlike financial reporting or healthcare data, email marketing metrics are not subject to formal third-party verification.

Here’s what does exist:

• Customer feedback: Large-scale users and agencies often spot anomalies and pressure providers to improve accuracy.
• ESP transparency: Some providers, like Mailchimp, occasionally publish details on how they calculate opens and filter bot activity.
• Deliverability experts: Independent analysts and consultants sometimes audit engagement metrics, but their work isn’t standardized or enforceable.

In the end, ESPs largely police themselves. While some are proactive in addressing bot behavior, many still treat bot-triggered activity as legitimate unless you dig deep into your analytics.

What Can You Do About It?

If you want more accurate insights, here are a few steps you can take:

• Track engagement over time: Watch for sudden spikes, especially after emailing corporate domains.
• Look at behavior patterns: Repeated opens or clicks within seconds of sending often indicate bots.
• Compare opens to clicks and conversions: High opens with low conversions often signal inflated metrics.
• Segment your audience: Compare consumer vs. corporate email behavior.
• Use double opt-in and clean lists: Ensure you’re sending to real, engaged users.
• Manually validate with UTM tags: Check your website analytics to confirm real traffic.

The Bottom Line

Bots are here to stay, and their role in email security is essential. But as a marketer or business owner, you should understand how they’re affecting your stats—especially when those stats drive your decisions.

Act CRM, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact are powerful platforms, but their tracking systems aren’t perfect. Knowing how bots work, how they inflate metrics, and how to spot the difference between real and false engagement can help you become a more effective marketer.

Ultimately, the goal of email marketing isn’t to chase open rates—it’s to drive real action. So focus on outcomes, not just numbers. And when something looks too good to be true, it just might be a bot.