Why Your Cold Email Clicks Might Be Fake

Cold outbound has a common reporting issue that can mislead even experienced teams.

A sequence shows strong click activity, but the outcomes do not match. Replies stay low, on site engagement is minimal, and meetings do not materialize.

It is tempting to treat a click as a buying signal and tailor follow ups around it. But in many cases, the click did not come from the prospect at all.

Enterprise email security tools frequently test links automatically to assess risk before delivery or before the recipient opens the message. Microsoft Safe Links and Proofpoint URL Defense are two widely used examples. They may rewrite URLs, visit the destination, and trigger the same tracking events you rely on for engagement reporting.

This article provides a practical guide for outbound teams. It explains how to identify inflated click data, adjust reporting so metrics reflect actual buyer activity, and update workflows so you do not waste time pursuing false signals.

TL;DR

• Security scanners can generate click activity that looks like real engagement

• If click rate is rising but replies and meetings stay flat, treat clicks as inflated until you can confirm otherwise

• Separate reporting into raw clicks and human likely clicks

• Validate click activity against site analytics, including sessions, engagement, and conversions

• Remove click based triggers from outbound sequences, or require higher trust signals before acting

Signs Your Cold Email Clicks Are Inflated by Security Scanners

A security scanner is an automated email security software that opens and checks links in messages to detect phishing or malware before a person clicks. You may be dealing with inflated clicks if you see any of the following:

• Clicks show up almost immediately after the email is sent, often within seconds or the first minute

• One recipient generates several link clicks in a small window, and all at once

• Click activity jumps at odd times for your audience, like late night or early morning in their time zone

• Click rate looks unusually strong, but replies are average at best or below your baseline

• Your web analytics does not show a matching rise in sessions or pageviews

None of these points are definitive on their own. But when several show up together, it is usually a strong signal something automated is driving the activity.

What is Actually Happening

Many organizations use email security software that automatically checks links in incoming messages to block phishing and malicious content before it reaches employees.

In doing so, these systems can interfere with outbound tracking in a few important ways:

1) Link rewriting

Some platforms rewrite your URLs into security redirect links, so the click is recorded against the rewritten version rather than the original destination.

That can undermine attribution when your tracking depends on the original URL structure, and it often makes click reporting less reliable and harder to interpret.

For example, you might send a link to your pricing page, but the email client rewrites it into a long security URL. Your outbound tool logs the click, but your analytics cannot tie it cleanly to the original page or campaign, and it may show up as a generic redirect domain instead of your site.

2) Time of click checking

Some systems also verify the destination at the time of the click to confirm it has not become risky since the email was delivered. This real time validation is one of the reasons links are rewritten in the first place.

3) Automated link scanning

Before a recipient ever sees the email, a security tool may already have opened the link and loaded the page to evaluate it. If your tracking logs that request, it lands in your reports right alongside real engagement.

Treat click data as a signal that something touched the link, not as confirmation that a person did.

Why it Matters for Cold Email Teams

Click inflation can hurt you in two important ways:

1) It distorts your reporting

Click rates can look better than they actually are, which leads teams to draw the wrong conclusions. You end up spending weeks optimizing a metric that is not tied to real buyer activity.

2) It undermines your follow up logic

When sequences trigger different follow-ups based on clicks, inflated click data can push prospects into the wrong path and show messaging that does not match their behavior.

In the worst case, you send a note like “I saw you checked out the page” to someone who never clicked anything. That can come across as intrusive and erode trust quickly.

Treat Clicks as a Risk Signal and Not an Intent Signal

The practical adjustment is to rethink what a click actually represents in outbound.

In most cases, a click is telling you something about the recipient’s email environment, not their interest. It often means the inbox is protected by strict security controls, or that automated systems are actively inspecting links before a person ever sees the message.

That insight still has value. It helps you gauge how aggressive you can be with volume and how careful you need to be with follow up language. It also explains why your tracking may look noisy even when delivery is solid.

What it should not be used for is intent. Treat clicks as a supporting data point that only matters once it is backed up by human signals.

The Click Integrity Guide

Here is a simple and repeatable process you can run weekly.

Step 1: Split click reporting into two buckets

For every campaign, track two click numbers side by side.

1. Raw clicks
   This is the total your sending platform shows, including everything that triggers a click event.

2. Human-likely clicks
   This is the smaller set that looks consistent with actual prospect behavior.

A practical definition of human-likely clicks comes from applying a consistent filter to raw data.

Use criteria such as:

• The click is recorded at least two minutes after delivery

• The same recipient is not registering multiple different link clicks within a few seconds

• A related session appears in your web analytics shortly after the click

• The click is not part of a timestamp cluster where many recipients register clicks at the exact same moment

With those criteria in place, raw clicks remain a system level count, while human likely clicks become the figure you use for performance review and decision making.

Step 2: Build a simple Click Integrity Score

Introduce a single metric that reflects click credibility, so campaign reviews stay grounded in the same standard.

Score each campaign from 0 to 100:

• 0 indicates the click behavior is overwhelmingly consistent with automated scanning

• 100 indicates the behavior is consistent with normal prospect browsing

A practical rubric:

• Timing, 0 to 40:
  Allocate more points when clicks occur minutes or hours after delivery, and fewer points when they occur immediately after the send.

• Burst behavior, 0 to 30:
  Deduct points when clicks cluster at the same timestamp across many recipients, or when one recipient triggers multiple link clicks in rapid succession.

• Analytics alignment, 0 to 30:
  Allocate more points when clicks correspond to real sessions and meaningful page depth in your site analytics.

With this in place, you can report click volume without overstating engagement. Raw clicks may be high, but a low integrity score indicates the activity should not be interpreted as buyer intent.

Step 3: Validate clicks with your website analytics

Use your web analytics as the baseline verification step.

When a cold email platform reports a large number of clicks, you should see a corresponding increase in on site activity. The numbers will not reconcile perfectly, but the direction should.

Review the following:

• Sessions to the destination page with the expected UTM parameters

• Engagement indicators such as time on page and scroll depth

• Conversion signals including form starts and form submissions

• Sessions by geography that aligns with your targeting

A material click increase without any rise in sessions is a strong indicator that the click data is inflated.

Step 4: Remove click based triggers from cold sequences

When follow ups are triggered by clicks, inflated click data can route prospects into messaging that assumes they engaged when they did not. The result is misaligned outreach and unnecessary risk to trust.

Base branching on higher confidence signals:

• A reply

• A meeting scheduled

• A form submission

• Reply sentiment that is positive or neutral

• A verified on site session with meaningful engagement

If you decide to keep a click triggered branch, revise the language so it remains accurate without implying observation of behavior. Avoid something that includes “I saw you clicked.”

Use conditional wording instead, like “If you had a chance to review the page, I can send a brief summary.”

Step 5: Update guidance for click activity

A common workflow is to pull a list of recent people who clicked and have reps prioritize outreach. That can be effective, but only after you apply basic quality controls.

More reliable options include:

• Route click based tasks only when the Click Integrity Score clears a threshold you define

• Route only when a click is supported by a matching on site session in your analytics

• Route only when there is repeat behavior, such as a click followed by a later return visit, which is more consistent with human activity

This keeps you and your rep’s time focused on prospects with credible signals, rather than automated noise.

Step 6: Improve attribution and tracking to reduce click inflation noise

You cannot eliminate link scanning, but you can keep it from distorting your reporting.

Here are some practical improvements that help:

• Apply consistent UTM parameters to every link used in cold outbound so sessions and outcomes are attributable

  • An example of a link with UTM parameters: https://yourdomain.com/pricing?utm_source=cold_email&utm_campaign=click_integrity

• Optimize around outcomes that matter, such as form activity and meeting creation, rather than treating clicks as the primary metric

• Confirm your analytics is capturing the right landing page events, including key engagement and conversion actions

• Keep landing pages lightweight and fast to reduce edge cases where scanners and scripts create noisy behavior

• Limit link count in cold emails. One primary link is far easier to interpret than several competing links

Also monitor how you use custom tracking domains. They can support branding and deliverability, but they can also make scanner patterns harder to recognize if your reporting and domain conventions are not kept clean.

What To Do Next

If your team is scaling outbound and click rates appear strong while replies remain flat, apply the Click Integrity Guide to your last two campaigns. It provides a clear view of whether the engagement is real.

You will either validate that the offer is driving genuine prospect activity, or you will confirm that click volume is being inflated by scanning and should not be used as an intent signal.

Either result is useful. It replaces assumptions with a concrete next step.

FAQ

Are clicks useless for cold email?

No, clicks still have value. The issue is how often they get interpreted as intent.

In outbound, click activity can tell you a lot about the recipient environment. It may indicate the audience sits behind strict security controls, and it can also reveal domains where filtering and deliverability risk are higher.

What clicks cannot do on their own is confirm interest. Without additional evidence, they are not a dependable intent signal.

Should I turn off click tracking?

Not necessarily.

Click tracking still matters for attribution, and it can be genuinely informative with warm audiences where you expect real engagement. In cold outbound, the better approach is to keep tracking in place but adjust how you read the data and how much weight you put on it.

Does this happen more with certain industries?

Often, yes. Industries with stricter compliance and heavier security controls tend to generate more automated scanning.

That is exactly why treating clicks as intent is risky. The more locked down the environment, the more misleading click data can become.