I recently came across a news brief on Expats.cz titled “Email Bots Now Open Most Messages,” referencing new data from Czech company Mailkit, showing that 65 percent of emails are now opened by automated systems rather than humans.
I completely agree with their concern – and support their efforts to raise awareness about this growing issue. Most people don’t realise that every time an email is opened, it may not be a person on the other end at all. In fact, that “open” might have been triggered by a bot, scanner, or AI-driven security filter.
While some of these bots serve legitimate purposes like spam detection or malware protection, the implications for privacy, data accuracy, and trust are far-reaching. Here are ten reasons why this matters more than most realise.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with a list of the top ten potential challenges with using email bots to open and scan emails – and that’s aside from the potential minefield that comes when we ask them to respond on our behalf… That’s for another post…
Top Ten Potential Challenges
1. False Analytics and Misleading Metrics
Open rates and click-through data become unreliable when bots trigger tracking pixels or links. This distorts campaign performance and undermines data-driven decisions.
2. Skewed A/B Testing and Optimisation
If bots “engage” with your messages, A/B tests for subject lines, send times, or content may produce false positives, leading to misguided marketing strategies.
3. Automation Misfires
Bots can trigger follow-up sequences or lead-scoring automations, causing irrelevant messages to be sent to real customers—or worse, overwhelming them with spammy follow-ups.
4. Privacy and Data Exposure
When bots—especially those operated by spam filters or corporate security systems—open emails, your message content may be scanned, logged, or stored without consent.
5. Security Risks
Malicious bots may harvest links, attachments, or data embedded in emails, exposing sensitive information or creating new attack vectors.
6. Reputation Damage
If bots generate spam-like behaviour (e.g., mass clicking or opening), your sender reputation can decline, affecting deliverability and causing legitimate messages to land in spam folders.
7. Lost Trust in Metrics
When open-rate data becomes meaningless, teams lose confidence in email analytics entirely—making it harder to justify campaigns or allocate budgets effectively.
8. Distorted Audience Segmentation
Automation systems that rely on engagement (opens, clicks) for segmentation may misclassify recipients, leading to poor targeting and irrelevant communication.
9. Inaccurate ROI Calculations
False engagement data means marketers may overestimate success, misallocate funds, and continue using ineffective strategies because they appear to work.
10. Strategic Blind Spots
When humans are no longer the true audience behind “engagement” metrics, organisations lose the ability to understand real audience behaviour—making genuine connection, trust, and impact far harder to achieve.
How Companies Can Build Smarter, More Human Email Engagement
Bots are a growing part of the email landscape, whether we like it or not, but this is not just a warning sign – it is an opportunity to rethink how we connect.
When businesses focus less on vanity metrics and more on meaningful interaction, they often uncover better insights, stronger relationships, and more authentic engagement. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Focus on real connections, not numbers.
Instead of chasing open rates, pay attention to what truly matters – conversation, conversions, and customer response. When a person takes the time to reply, share, or click with intent, that is genuine engagement.
Use smarter analytics.
Modern email platforms now let you filter out suspected bot activity or use behavioural cues to separate real interactions from automated ones. Clean data builds confidence and clarity.
Design for humans first.
Craft messages that invite a response, spark curiosity, or start a dialogue. A bot might open an email, but only a person will feel moved to act on it.
Look at timing and context.
Humans engage differently from machines. Pay attention to response time, scroll depth, and follow-up actions. These tell a more accurate story than raw “opens.”
Make privacy a positive.
Treat data protection as part of your value proposition. Let your audience know their trust matters. When you respect privacy, engagement becomes an act of confidence, not just compliance.
Think long-term.
Bots will continue to evolve, but so will our tools and tactics. The brands that win will not be the ones chasing algorithms – they will be the ones cultivating real relationships.
My Personal / Professional Suggestion…
AI-based automation can make our work faster and more efficient – and that is an fabulous asset that needs to be embraced by industry.
In the rush to speed-up automation, however, we need to remember, whether it is a single email or a large campaign, that there is intended to be a real person on the other end.
There may well come a time – and probably sooner rather than later – where even the humans are no longer in the email loop – but until that happens, while transfer of data needs to be efficient, connection is still a valuable human characteristic. So let’s embrace AI, embrace technology as a whole, but do so in a way that keeps everyone and everything safe, and where the real message does not get lost in the process.