Bot Filtering & Apple Mail Privacy Protection Compliance in Zoho Campaigns

Bot Filtering & Apple Mail Privacy Protection Compliance in Zoho Campaigns

Dear Campaigns Users,

The wait is over! We’re excited to announce that the enhanced bot filtering feature is now live in Zoho Campaigns. This update brings greater accuracy to your email campaign reports by distinguishing real user engagement from automated bot activity.


What are bot opens/clicks?

Bot opens/clicks are interactions triggered by automated software rather than real users. These bots often scan emails for security purposes, leading to inflated engagement metrics. You may notice multiple opens/clicks from a single contact—even if they never actually interacted with your email.


Why does bot filtering matter?

Bot-generated activity can skew your campaign analytics, making it harder to measure true engagement. With our advanced bot filtering, you’ll get a more reliable view of your audience’s response, allowing for better decision-making.


Key features of bot filtering in Zoho Campaigns

  • Easy toggle: Enable or disable bot filtering with a single switch under Settings > General Settings > Bot Filter. The feature is enabled by default to ensure data accuracy from the start.

  • Transparency: Your reports will indicate whether bot filtering is active, keeping your analytics clear and reliable.

  • Detailed reporting: Whether the filter is enabled or disabled, your campaign reports will display:

    • Reliable opens/clicks (verified engagement by individuals)

    • Bot opens/clicks (automated activity)

    • This dual metric system provides a clearer understanding of your campaign performance.

  • Apple MPP tracking: Reports now include a dedicated metric for Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) opens, helping you analyze the impact of Apple’s privacy policies on your data.



Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)
  

Apple Mail users can enable Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which prevents senders from accurately tracking email opens. When activated, Apple Mail pre-loads tracking pixels automatically, making it seem like all emails are opened—even if they aren’t.

This results in inflated open rates and makes it challenging to distinguish real user engagement from automated activity.


How Does Zoho Campaigns Address This?

Zoho Campaigns provides MPP Opens as a separate metric in your reports. Using intelligent data modeling, our system helps you assess engagement more accurately, so you can measure campaign success despite Apple’s privacy updates.


How to Enable Bot Filtering in Zoho Campaigns
  

Step 1: Locate the Bot Filter option
Go to Settings > General Settings to find the Bot Filtering setting.






Step 2: Enable or disable bot filtering

  • Enabled (default): Your reports will prioritize real user engagement while still displaying bot activity separately.




Disabled: Your reports will show total opens/clicks (including both human and bot activity), with bot metrics available for comparison.



Step 3: Confirmation pop-up when disabling bot filtering

If you choose to disable bot filtering, you will receive a confirmation pop-up explaining that this may affect segmenting and automation workflows.





InfoNotes: With the enhanced bot filtering now active, you may notice a more accurate reflection of your open and click rates. Prior to April 1st 2025, campaigns filtered out some bot requests to show open rates. Now, with this update, our bot detection has been significantly improved, allowing us to identify a greater number of bot interactions. Consequently, you might observe a slight decrease in open and click rates compared to previously inflated numbers, as we now detect and filter more bots than before

  • Apple MPP opens will be included in segments and workflows by default.

  • Campaign reports from April 1st 2025, onward will show updated data, including reliable opens, unreliable opens, and bot opens based on bot filter settings.

  • For past campaigns, we have filtered out the bot engagement by default, hence the campaign reports will show reliable and MPP opens.
  • New filters in the Contacts section allow for deeper analysis of reliable opens vs. bot opens.

  • Changes to bot filtering settings will be tracked in Audit Logs.



    • Bot engagement data is now available when exporting campaign reports.


    We’re Here to Help!
      

    We believe this update will give you more confidence in your email analytics and help you optimize your campaigns with precision. Try it out, and let us know how it works for you!

    Happy email marketing!

    Best regards,
    Zoho Campaigns


    • Sticky Posts

    • Tip of the week 03 - Sending emails in batches

      Today's marketers not only want their email marketing to be efficient, but also smart. For an email campaign, you may think you have all the essential elements for lead conversion—a big mailing list, an attractive template design, and the most-engaging message content, but after hitting the ‘send’ button, you may not get the expected conversions. Wondering why? Here’s one of the major reasons. Many marketers miss out on sending the email campaign the right way. Did you know that you should not be
    • Tip of the week 04 - Know about your recipients' 'prime open time.'

      In today's market, the importance of customer behavior is astounding, with a vast amount of research and resources going into finding how customers make decisions. The process of persuading your customers to open your email and click on your call-to-action becomes easy when you understand the psychology behind their behavioral traits. Time to turn into a psychologist! Let's get to the basics—you want your emails to resonate well with your recipients. So, what's the primary thing involved here? It's
    • Zoho Campaigns Expert Diaries on SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

      Hi email champs,  As email marketers, we find great lessons in each other's works—be it the subject lines that worked good, the design that was received well, or the CTA that had the maximum clicks. Email marketing encompasses a wide variety of topics spanning everything from creation and design to development and deliverability.  Here's when we from the Zoho Campaigns team found the need to build an email marketing community comprising of seasoned marketers and email geeks who can help each other
    • Email Deliverability Tip #3: Seal the deal with the preheader

      In the last post, we learned about the subject line. Today we'll be learning about the preheader. A preheader is the short text that follows the subject line in an email. The preheader is designed to hint at what your email message is all about. A good preheader should act as a second subject line and convince your contacts to open the email. Now, let's learn the best way to craft a preheader. Your subject line and preheader should work together and accurately convey the gist of your email. Keep
    • Tip of the week 15 - Add subscription-preferences option. Drive more engagement.

      If crafting content for emails, getting creatives done, and running email campaigns is your love, then unsubscribes are the heartbreakers.  You can save your emails from being unsubscribed/trashed by adding a proper subscription-preferences option in your emails (works best at the time of signup). Giving subscribers the option to choose what they want to receive from you and decide how often (frequency of the emails) your emails should hit their inboxes will increase the reach of your campaigns manifolds. 
    • Recent Topics

    • How do we get a follow up to Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility

      Hi, How do we get a followup and answers to the questions we have asked during 'Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility'. I have repsonded to the answers but have no way of following up. Thanks Brett
    • Frustrating Email Duplication and Timeline Issues Between Zoho Mail and CRM

      Hi Zoho team, Can someone please help clarify what’s going on here? Here’s what’s happening: I initiate an email to a lead using Zoho Mail. The lead is created in Zoho CRM via the integration, and the email is correctly associated with that lead. Sometimes,
    • Best Strategy to import contacts and when to create leads

      Hi, I'm new to Bigin and looking for a "best" strategy. I had and have the following idea for an use case: 1. Search for websites which I want to contact 2. Create a contact in Bigin with all the required information based on this website (via API if
    • Better implementation of Item Category on Invoices and Estimates

      1) I have added Item Category as a custom field. Honestly, this should be a native part of the item itself, and either required, optional, or not used.  2) When entering an item on an invoice, you have to enter the first character(s) of the item, otherwise
    • Bulk Update (via the 'Accountant' menu)

      Why can't we bulk update Expenses to Owner's Drawings? It always ends in failure with the error "Involved account types are not applicable". If such conversion isn't possible, why make the option available? Better to allow it though.
    • Set Reply_to parameter for "Email an Invoice" API Endpoint

      Is there a way to set "Reply To" email address when using the Email an invoice API endpoint? It doesn't seem to be in documentation, but sometimes there are undocumented parameters. If it doesn't exist, please consider adding it as parameter since all
    • Zoho Books adaptado a la legislación española. ¿Sustitutos?

      Buenas a tod@s No tenemos información sobre la adaptación de Zoho Books a la nueva ley de facturación en España. Me preguntan usuarios de zoho que deberían hacer. Propongo una lista de alternativas, si al final se opta por no desarrollar la funcionalidad
    • A Question about Email Handling (Sending and Receiving)

      Hello! I was looking into setting up Email Aliases for my domain that I purchased a while ago through Zoho Mail. I set up a singular alias already and have it linked with Gmail, and it seems to be working out well. However, I set up another alias today,
    • Kaizen #201 - Answering Your Questions | Webhooks, Functions, and Schedules

      Hello everyone! Welcome back to another post in the Kaizen series! We are incredibly grateful for all the feedback we received, and as promised, we will answer all the queries in this Kaizen series. Last week, in our 200th post, we addressed one of the
    • Zoho Projects Strict Dates for Tasks

      Hi Zoho Projects team, I would love to see a feature to allow Strict Dates for Tasks. Sometimes in projects you have dates which must not move, even if predecessor Task dates change. For example, perhaps you need to book access to a facility to perform
    • No Mark as filed buton in GSTR -3b

      We are filing our GST in GST portal -and want to mark GST in Zoho books as filed. It is possible to mark GSTR 1 as filed through Mark as filed button. But there is no such button in GSTR-3B.  How to mark corrosponding GSTR-3B as filed?
    • ranking by drag the choices instead of rank by number

      is the option of draging the choice is available instead of selecting the ranking number for each choice?
    • TASKS - Dashboard to show ALL Tasks from ALL apps.

      The Unified Tasks View is useless without the other main zoho apps (Desk, Books & even FSM now) We need to see all our tasks under on pane of glass. The Zoho developers are out of touch with real business workflows. So how it was designed they want us
    • Function #13: Transaction level profitability

      In Zoho Books, the Profit & Loss report provides valuable insights into the overall profitability of your business, indicating whether you have made a profit or incurred a loss. However, there may be occasions when you wish to assess whether a specific
    • Zoho CRM with Sap Business One

      I need information about integration CRM with Sap BO, thank.
    • Allow bill to nest multiple projects

      A bill (purchase) is more often than not used across multiple projects and this functionality is missing and very urgently needed for accurate reporting of purchases across projects
    • How can I change iOS display setting at night?

      It seems like at night the two light daytime settings themes (white with blue on top or just white) are not available and I am forced to choose among a few other colours that I really don’t want, I.e., black, blue or orange. Is there a way for me to always
    • Celebrate WWW day with Zoho Desk

      Let's recall the times when we learned 'WWW' stands for World Wide Web. Whether you like to call it wuh-wuh-wuh or double-u double-u double-u, or World Wide Web, we all owe a lot to this groundbreaking invention that reshaped how we connect, communicate,
    • The power of camaraderie

      In the days before the internet boom, conversations happened face-to-face or over the phone. Phone calls were precious; every minute counted, and every word mattered. We looked forward to those moments of real connection. Even today, nothing quite matches
    • Message Content is missing/invalid fault

      We cannot create a complete template over zoho. Some features - like button adding - is missing. The templates are created on Zoho and edited on Meta to solve the problem. But still then, some features cannot be used and the message returns this failure
    • Können bereits gesendete Kampagnen im Nachhinein einer Mailing-Liste zugeordnet werden, ohne dass die Kampagne erneut versendet wird?

      Wir haben unsere älteren Kampagnen in Campaigns über Kontaktkategorien versendet. Dann haben wir umgestellt auf Mailing-Listen, damit alte Kampagnen auch in einem Archiv aufgerufen werden können. Jetzt ist die Frage, ob die Kampagnen, die über die Kategorieauswahl
    • Newsletter Templates Are Not Mobile Responsive

      Hi, I've already submitted this request to ZOHO once this morning, but for some reason your system logged me out, wouldn't accept my username/password login, and isn't showing any evidence that I've submitted this issue. So here we go again... I am under the impression that your newsletter templates are supposed to be mobile optimised: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/blog/responsive-email-marketing.html This is clearly not the case, as the last 2 newsletters I've created in Campaigns look perfect
    • Digest Juillet - Un résumé de ce qui s'est passé le mois dernier sur Community

      Bonjour à toutes et à tous, Zoom sur les nouveautés de juillet dernier au sein de Zoho Community France. Zoho Commerce vous propose une expérience améliorée grâce à sa nouvelle interface ergonomique et à ses fonctionnalités avancées, conçues pour faciliter
    • 100 Rows in a Subform is too limited

      We have a custom Module in CRM called Price Sheets, when we get a PO from a client we add the items from the PO to it and then check with our vendors for pricing and add our margin etc And after it is complete we have setup custom scripts to create a
    • Uninstall unattended agent

      Hello, I'm testing many use case before we purchase assist for our remote support. While we are testing what is the proper way to uninstall agent?  I did uninstall from systray, from windows control panel but still ZohoURservice is running. How can I uninstall client side?
    • Zoho Commerce Down?

      Is anyone else's storefront down at the moment? Ours has been down for at lease an hour.
    • Zoho Projects iOS app update: Dashboard widget on the home screen

      Hello everyone! We are excited to introduce the 'Dashboard' widget in the latest version(v3.10.8) of the Zoho Projects iOS app. Dashboard widgets allow you to view the project progress visually without having to open the app. The widget enables you to
    • Idea: Workflow Rule Trigger Only When Subform Row Is Updated (Thanks to New Inline Row Feature)

      Hi Zoho team and community, With the recent update to Zoho CRM, we can now add or delete rows inside subforms without entering edit mode, using the inline Add row button. This is a fantastic improvement for user experience — seamless, fast, and efficient.
    • Auto add new section based on document choices

      Hi team, I'm wondering if the below is a possilibity within Zoho sign. We have an application process to become a customer of ours, we currently use Zoho Sign to manage this application and this works quite well. However, if the customer indicates 'YES'
    • Change rate after xxxx kilometers

      Is there a way to change the miileage rate after a certain mileage. After 5000 kilometers, we want the rate to automaticly change. Thank !
    • Subform Entry Limit from a Subform Field (A different Subform on the same Form)

      Hi, I would like to be able to use a Subform 1 Field as the Dynamic Entry Limit for Subform 2. Even better would be able to use some code with the values, so for example using the Subform 1 Qty Field as the Max Entry limit for Subform 2, BUT only the
    • Slow Zobot response time

      Hi, We launched the Zobot on our site to sit along with the regular Live Chat but had to take the Zobot down as the response time was very slow. The bot was slow to begin then once the chat had been initiated the response was very slow. The bot typing
    • how to show data of 3 table in pivot

      Based on engineer name i want to get the data from 3 different tables like Service , amc, installation , but Every table contain Engineer name As Common , based that from the service table i want to take service amount , and count of service based on
    • Custom Status for Purchase Orders

      Currently Zoho books has functionality to create custom statuses for Sales Orders. Can this be extended to include custom status for purchase orders as well? It was a great decision to add this functionality to sales orders. Our use case is for tracking
    • Ask the Experts 22: Scale up your customer support with integrations & extensibility

      Hello everyone! The foundation is set. Build the beams. Raise the pillars. Set the walls. The Zoho Desk architecture stands tall. Let's discuss integration within Zoho Desk, extensions from the Marketplace, creating connections between Zoho Desk and other
    • Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even custom function across multiple departments?

      Is there no way to duplicate an entire workflow or even a custom function from one department to other departments, like it is done for field duplication from one department layout to other department layouts?
    • Automated reply on any new ticket raised by customer

      Hi ZohoDesk team, Can we set up an automation so that whenever a new ticket is created against our support email; ZohoDesk immediately sends our standard acknowledgement, including the expected TAT for resolution? If that’s possible, could you share the
    • Zoho equipment rental - just like Booqable

      Hi Zoho Team, is it possible to create a module or a system like booqable? our business starts renting our IT equipment assets that have been recently used for Events and Projects, we are having ZOHO books so its easy to integrate if you create one. Booqable
    • Profit Margin Scheme

      I'm a tourism company operating in the aviation and outbound tourism sectors. Typically, taxes are 0% as our operations are outside the country. However, the state has now imposed a tax on the profit margin. This means if the selling price of an airline
    • Visibility and Enforcement for Outdated Plug Parameters in Zobot Canvas

      Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, Greetings, We’d like to suggest an important usability and quality improvement for working with Plugs inside Zobot. Current Behavior: When we update the code of an existing Plug, any Zobot card using that Plug requires manual resaving.
    • Next Page