Account Engagement Prospect record shows email interaction activity that never happened

Data pubblicazione: Feb 6, 2026

Descrizione

Sometimes prospects will be unsubscribed without clicking the “unsubscribe” button, or records will be unsubscribed multiple times. Additionally, the prospect might have several suspicious link clicks that seem out of character with how the prospect engages with tracked content. This can happen for a number of reasons.

When Account Engagement sends an email, links in the email are rewritten with tracking code specific to each individual prospect who received it, including the “unsubscribe” link. This allows Account Engagement to see which individual clicked which link. (Read more about link tracking). However, sometimes links, including the unsubscribe link, will be “clicked” by someone who is not that particular individual. Account Engagement still records an unsubscribe, however, because the unique tracking code for the link was loaded. This can happen for a few different reasons, including aggressive spam filters, email forwarding, or social media sharing.

Aggressive Spam Filters

When an email server receives an email from Account Engagement, it must assess the email before delivering it to the recipient’s inbox, or to the spam folder, or putting suspicious emails in quarantine. Sometimes, the recipient server will “click” links to check for suspicious content. This “click” is sufficient to load the link’s tracking code, which could tell Account Engagement that the prospect has clicked the link to unsubscribe, if present.

Email forwarding

Sometimes prospects will forward their tracked emails. If the new recipient opens and clicks a link in the email, the tracking pixel and tracking code that were unique to the original prospect are loaded. Those activities, including an unsubscribe click, will be attributed to the prospect in Account Engagement due to the tracking code. Additionally, the new recipient could have an aggressive spam filter, which could result in an open and link click.

Social Media Sharing

Often, people like to share the emails they send as links on social media, or posted online as a newsletter. However, if they post the version of the email they received in their inbox, it most likely will have tracked links. Then, any individual who clicks links in that post will have their activity attributed to the prospect record who received the original email. This can result in individuals or web crawlers clicking links and causing link activity or unsubscribes, especially repeated unsubscribes.

Risoluzione

This issue can me mitigated with some best practices, along with some Account Engagement tools.

Email Authentication

Email sending domains can be authorized for sending by Account Engagement, which helps with deliverability; this could help cut down on aggressive spam filters clicking links. Click to read more about email authentication.

Email Preference Center

Another option to reduce spam filter unsubscribes, specifically, is to use the email preference center tag in Account Engagement emails, rather than the unsubscribe tag. Account Engagement only requires one of these tags be placed in your email. Since the EPC required multiple clicks to unsubscribe, a server clicking links shouldn't result in the prospect being unsubscribed. We also recommend making sure that your Email Preference Center page is fully secure and does not contain any mixed content - bots may be able to exploit security weaknesses, leading to unintended results.

Best Practices

Especially for internal employees who may receive emails as prospects, encourage some email best practices. Emails should not be forwarded to large groups of people or posted online. Emails posted online on social media or company websites should be copy/pasted directly from Account Engagement so that no tracking information is included, and the “unsubscribe” link should be removed before it is posted.

IP Filters

We've discovered that most of the bot activity is coming from a certain range of IPs, and have put filters in place to help prevent this activity from skewing reporting. You can find more information on these filters in this article.

Numero articolo Knowledge

000383884

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