What are spam traps
Spam traps are a spam prevention method. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers create spam traps to lure in spammers and block them. With more than half of the world email traffic consisting of spam, spam traps are a necessary tool to diminish fraud.
Understanding Spam Traps
A spam trap, sometimes referred to as a honeypot, will appear to be a real email address that belongs to a real person, but it isn't.
Spam traps don't belong to an individual and have no value in outbound communication. Since spam trap addresses never opt-in to receive emails, any inbound messages would flag the sender as a spammer.
Not maintaining healthy lists and not abiding by the rules of permission-based email marketing is the only way spam traps could end up on your email lists.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers (i.e. Composite Blocking, SpamCop) commonly use spam traps to catch malicious senders. But also, lawful senders who don't maintain good email hygiene or use poor list building strategies can raise a red flag, too.
Pristine spam traps, often collected by web scrapers, are the most dangerous because ISPs regard sending to them as abusive.
Types of spam traps
TYPO SPAM TRAPS
Have you ever misspelled “Google” in your web browser’s location bar, but it still took you directly to Google.com? Have you sent out an email to “Gmial” or “yaho” and noticed it didn’t bounce?
Typo spam traps work like that. They are real email addresses which, in spite of their domain misspelling, do not bounce. ISPs set them up to get insight on marketers’ best practices.
They create addresses that contain intentional mistakes – usually, mistakes people are very likely to make when typing in their address in a form. Then, they analyze the emails those addresses receive to detect phishing and other malicious practices.
Recycled/Grey Spam Traps
Remember that email address you had in high school that you no longer use? ISPs and blacklist providers often take abandoned email addresses and use them to catch spammers. These spam traps are called recycled or grey spam traps.
Again, there are few ways to end up with a grey spam trap in your list if you follow email marketing best practices. But here are two scenarios:
- You acquired your email list from a third party,
- or you may have added that email address to your list a while ago. In the meantime, an ISP or a blacklist provider has turned it into a spam trap.
In the latter case, the emails you sent to that particular address must have hard bounced at some point. Not removing that hard bounce caused you to get a grey spam trap – and it may be jeopardizing your reputation as we speak.
It’s important to be in control of your lists, from opt-ins to hard bounces and unsubscribes. Paying close attention to your engagement rates – especially your bounce and open rate – is the first step you can take to avoid spam traps.
Furthermore, to keep recycled spam traps at bay:
- Permanently suppress hard bounces
- Segment out users who don’t engage with your emails
- Don’t use email lists if you are unsure about their good opt-in practices.
Not removing that hard bounce from your list caused you to get a grey spam trap – and it may be jeopardizing your reputation as we speak.
Pristine Spam Traps
ISPs and blacklist providers consider it abusive when you send emails to users who don’t expect any communication from you.
This is where pristine, or pure, spam traps come in.
ISPs or blacklist providers create email addresses that are publicly accessible in forum posts or blog posts so web scrapers can find and collect them.
Unfortunately, many email lists available for purchase come from web scrapers. To protect their customers and catch potential spammers, ISPs will filter and possibly block senders who email pristine spam traps.
Due to their very nature, pristine spam traps are extremely dangerous to your sender reputation. It’s easy to understand why: the only way they can get on an email list is if a marketer doesn’t abide to ethical email marketing practices.
Domain Spam Traps
Email marketers talk less about them, although domain spam traps are equally risky.
In this instance, every email address for a certain domain will be a spam trap. Blacklist providers would openly request owners of dormant domains to point their MX records to the blacklist provider. When that happens, all the email addresses of that domain become spam traps.
How to Avoid Spam Traps
Let’s move on to some practical tips to help you keep spam traps away from your email lists and achieve only the best email marketing results.
Pay attention to your open rates.
They’re one of the most important email marketing metrics, and for good reason. Firstly, open rates tell you how your content is doing, so you know what and when to adjust. Also, open rates can be a good indication of the potential presence of spam traps in your database.
So, if any of your subscribers haven’t engaged with your emails in more than six months, try a re-engagement campaign first. That way you can find out if they still want to remain on your email list.
If your emails to them bounce, remove those addresses right away – some of them may be spam traps.
If they don’t bounce, but don’t open your email either, remove them anyway. Keeping people on your list who don’t engage with your emails affects your sender reputation.
Don’t ever buy an email list
When buying a list, you may not be aware if the owner has used proper collection methods. There is a reasonable chance you are buying a list full of spam traps. Don’t take that risk.
Furthermore, there are many other risky addresses you may acquire. Catch-all, role based or disposable emails don’t contribute to your email marketing. Also, when you email people who haven’t opted in, you’re breaking one of the most important marketing rules: asking permission. That may result in a high number of spam complaints, which will impact your reputation and email deliverability.
If you’ve already bought an email list, don’t use it before you do an email validation check. The alternative is you could end up with beng listed as a spammer if you do not.
Use double-opt in
Using double opt-in is the first step you can take to ensure you’re adding a real human being to your list. Moreover, double opt-in requires a user to confirm they want to join your mailing list, so it generates a higher level of user interest. That results in higher overall engagement, which is a great way to gain ISPs’ trust and support.
NOTE: While double opt-in is a good industry practice, please remember that recipients who may have opted-in to your list at one point may become inactive later on. If an email address is inactive for some time, their address may be converted to recycled/grey traps. Implement List segmentation when you come up against these kinds of accounts.
Validate new email addresses
While implementing double opt-in is an effective measure against risky addresses, it’s not enough to keep your list safe. Clean your list in bulk, upload it on our platform and the system will verify it for you when it is sent out, it will block all addresses/domains that do not exist and mark them as bounced
Maintaining good email hygiene is the foundation of effective email marketing. Your campaigns will have the visibility they deserve and they’ll generate long-term results and a steady ROI.
Figure out your sender reputation
Your sender reputation will tell you whether or not your messages have been hitting any spam traps. While these are essential tools, they don’t paint a complete picture.
Email providers take a lot of metrics into consideration to determine your sender reputation. Those metrics include spam complaints, sending to unknown users, your potential presence in industry blacklists, and more.
Open rates don’t tell the whole story
While some blogs and email marketers stress the importance of open rates, you may be missing the larger picture.
What a lot of marketers are not aware of is that every HTML-based email contains an invisible 1px by 1px image that must load in order for the email to be tracked as an open.
If your recipients simply read your subject line, have html disabled, or block images, your email is not considered or counted open. If, for example, your list contains 1000 email addresses, but your open rate is 20%, would you dump 800 legitimately obtained address? Of course you wouldn’t.
Ready to Improve your Email Marketing Results?
We have outlined some email marketing best practices in this article:
- Engage your customers regularly and segment out any unresponsive addresses.
- Use double opt-in on your sign-up forms to ensure immediate engagement.
- If you've already purchased a list, upload it as unconfirmed, and send out a confirmation email to the addresses asking them for confirmation of addition to your lists, this will reduce the number of email addresses that are spamtraps or not interested in mails. Always run it through this process to avoid spam traps and abuse emails.
Following email marketing best practices can be challenging in the beginning. However, getting labeled a spammer or an abusive sender can put a hard stop on your revenue and significantly harm your business.
Ultimately, it's always in your best interest to try and adhere to the concepts we outlined in this article.
If you're ready to begin cleaning your contacts, ask us for help if you require it.
