When evaluating engagement, it’s important to separate real contact activity from automated systems. With Segmentation 2.0, you can filter your open and click data to ensure that your segments reflect true contact engagement.
Act-On’s True Open uses AI to analyze behavioral patterns. It reviews email activity (opens and clicks) and scores each one based on the likelihood that it was generated by a person rather than a system.
Quick Reference (Advanced Users) – Click to Expand
- Edit your segment and open the Settings tab.
- Enable Exclude with True Open once you’ve added an email behavior factor.
- Select up to 2 categories to exclude: Security Systems, Privacy Systems, or People.
Apply the True Open filter to your segment
When editing a segment, open the Settings tab.
The Exclude with True Open setting appears when your segment includes an email behavior factor.
You can exclude Security system activity, Privacy system activity, and/or People activity from your segment evaluation.
Note: You can only exclude two categories at once. Person-based activity is always prioritized. For example, if a contact registers 10 Security System clicks but later generates 1 Person click, that person will still be included in the segment.
Categories explained
| Category | Includes |
| Person | Opens and clicks by the actual email recipient |
| Security System | Opens and clicks by spam appliances or link checkers (bots) designed to protect recipients from threats like malware or phishing. |
| Privacy System | Proxy opens created when a mail server pre-loads content for faster display and privacy protection. Apple Mail Privacy Protection is the most common example. |
True Open Filter Indicator
A badge on the right side of the segment row will indicate if the True Open filter is impacting this segment factor.
You can also see this indicator in the Info Hover available on the segment listing page
Understanding True Open
Security and privacy system activity does not mean that a person failed to receive or engage with your email. It confirms that the message was delivered to an active inbox.
However, these systems can inflate key metrics and reduce the accuracy of lead scoring and automated workflows. That’s why applying the True Open filter helps ensure that only meaningful engagement shapes your results.
Email security and privacy systems are constantly evolving, and some opens or clicks will always be difficult to categorize with certainty. True Open adapts to these changes, but no system can guarantee 100% accuracy.