Your click rate has a bot problem

A sustainer upgrade email goes out on a Tuesday morning. Within a minute, clicks are climbing, even on the privacy policy link in the footer.

By lunch, your upgrades are barely moving.

After Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection inflated opens, we turned to clicks for a more reliable signal of engagement. 

Now they’re showing the same cracks.

What’s doing the clicking
Many employers and email providers use security software that checks the links in an email to make sure they’re safe, often before anyone reads it. 

When that software opens a link, your email platform counts it as a click.

Omnivery’s State of Email Bots 2026 research found bots generated about 2% of clicks on consumer email in 2023. By 2026, that share had climbed to roughly 16%.

That’s the average. At Outlook and Hotmail, Omnivery found about 30% of clicks came from bots.

For comparison, opens are even further gone. Omnivery estimates about half of consumer email opens are now machine-generated.

Why nonprofits should look closer
GlueLetter analyzed 105 million newsletter clicks from January through May 2026 and broke them out by email domain. 

When emails were sent to people with .org work addresses, about 93% of the clicks came from bots, the second-highest rate of any domain. Emails to .gov addresses came in at around 85%.

Many of our email lists include work addresses: board members, coalition partners, foundation staff, or maybe people who signed up from the office. 

Any of them may sit behind a filter that clicks first.

Fundraising emails averaged a 0.59% click rate in M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks, about six clicks per 1,000 people. So a few bot clicks can flip which test version wins.

What bot clicks quietly break
The real risk shows up anywhere click data makes decisions on autopilot.

A scanner that routinely clicks links in emails to a work address can keep that contact in your “active” segment long after a person stopped reading. 

That’s… not great. Mailing people who never read drags on your sender reputation.

Click-triggered automations have the same problem. A “saw the appeal but didn’t give” follow-up can fire for people who never saw anything.

Unsubscribes are the sneakiest risk. Scanners can “click” your unsubscribe link too, and if one click removes someone, supporters get dropped without ever asking to leave.

What to do about the click problem
Ask your platform exactly where its bot filter applies. Many platforms filter bot clicks, but coverage varies.

ActionKit filters machine-generated clicks in reporting, while retaining unfiltered click data separately for analysis.

Mailchimp filters bot clicks out of its reports by default, and its own testing found about 1 in 5 clicks were bots with basic detection. 

Constant Contact’s filter, on by default for new accounts, also keeps suspected bot clicks out of segments and automations.

Judge tests by what happens after the click. Gifts and completed actions are much harder for a scanner to fake.

Revenue per 1,000 emails sent works well here, and M+R’s $54 average for fundraising messages gives you a benchmark. But of course, lean more on your own benchmarks.

Build engagement segments on human signals. Weight completed forms and replies more heavily than raw clicks. Replies also help your inbox placement.

Check clicks against your web analytics. If your email platform reports far more clicks from a send than your website analytics shows visits, the gap is a rough read on scanner traffic.

The bottom line
I’ve been as guilty as anyone of treating clicks as the honest metric. 

Let’s be very clear: They still beat opens, but I’d build your program around the things only a person can do, like making a gift or hitting reply.

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

‘Til next time!
Sara