Massive Traffic Spike to Website When Sending Email Campaigns

  • 20 March 2024
  • 2 replies
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Every time we send an email campaign to our Klaviyo list(s), we immediately see a giant spike in traffic to our website.  We have several tools that all show spikes and log what they are reporting as visitors and sessions, perfectly coinciding with the campaign being sent from Klaviyo.

Google Analytics GA4, GoSquared (showing real time traffic spikes into the thousands per second while the blast is being sent), Lucky Orange and Hotjar (session recording tools) will all show these spikes.

These traffic spikes are screwing up our analytics in multiple ways: (a) showing a lot more traffic on a day that we send an email blast that isnt’ ‘real’ traffic, (b) using up valuable session counts that we’re charged for from tools like Lucky Orange and LogRocket, etc.

It’s obvious something in the email campaign (a URL) is being hit or checked by something (or thousands of somethings) as the email is sending.   We have various links to our site in the email campaign.

We read a generic article about UTM tagging and links being checked by bots - but how do we stop this or minimize it?

Thanks!

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Here is example charts showing these massive spikes on the days that a campaign was sent from Klaviyo:

 

 

Kat Mofokeng
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Hey @posterprintshop 

 

Now, the issue with the bots has to be controlled before sending the email. Once the email is sent then there's little to do. And sadly to detect and segment bots you have to send campaigns.

 

We have used segmentation in the past to detect and exclude bots by their behavior, but this can only go so far.

 

There's another method we are using to detect bots that consists in including a hidden link that can't be clicked or even seen by humans but is in the email nevertheless, these links can be seen by bots and any profile that report clicks on that link is 100% a bot. But this is not also 100% accurate to detect malicious bots.

 

Let me elaborate on that last part. Sometimes legit recipients might have a security measure in their email provider that could be opening their email and checking all the links for them before they actually open them (sort of like how the Apple Privacy Policy works), which might paint someone as a bot when they are not truly bots.

 

So sadly there's not a 100% sure way to prevent this but we sure can mitigate things by segmentation contacts that have clicked on hidden/specific link and excluding that segment when you send a campaign. 

 

Hope this is of help!

Kat Mofokeng | Email List Growth | Converting & Nurturing Subs | https://codecrew.us/email-list-growth/

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