A New Spam Appliance is Being Monitored, Potentially Altering Open Rates

What's Changing

We have added a new security appliance to our watch list for filtering out automated email activity, specifically Opens.

Background

Part of Act-On's email performance monitoring involves tracking email robots and spam appliances, removing their open and click activity from reports to not interfere with actual human activity data.

We recently discovered that some customers' email data had an unusual spike in Opens and found it was an updated corporate security appliance screening and opening some emails. This appliance's signatures are being added to our list of observed security devices, moving its tracked opens to Automated Opens, which are filtered out from email activity data.

When 

March 8, 2023.

Customer Impact

Open rates in the email activity reports may be impacted (seeing a decline) since this particular spam appliance is now being filtered. Some customers will see a significant change, while others may notice a more modest change.