If you are an email marketer, you will want to check your list for spam traps regularly. This will help you identify and prevent these pitfalls before they can cause damage to your marketing campaigns.
Spam traps are a type of fraud management tool that is used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers to catch malicious senders. They also help mailbox providers and blocklist owners identify and verify that a sender is legitimate.
Not all spam traps are created equal, and some can have serious consequences for senders. Here are a few types of check spam traps to watch out for:
Honeypot Traps
A honey pot is a juicy weed that’s irresistible to a wild animal. It looks pristine and seems perfectly innocent, but it’s actually a decoy.
It’s the same with certain spam traps that are made to look like real subscribers, but really don’t belong to anyone. These are often obtained through illegal means such as renting, buying, or collecting email addresses from the web for bulk mailing purposes.
They can be a sign that you aren’t following best practices for list building and upkeep, or that your email sending domain is not valid. This could lead to your mail being flagged by mailbox providers and blacklist providers as a spam trap, which would result in your emails getting blocked or placed in the junk folder.
Pristine Traps
A pristine trap is an address that was never meant to be on a sender’s list, but ended up being scraped from web pages or purchased from a third-party. ISPs regard them as the most dangerous because they are not legitimate and can be a threat to senders’ reputations.
Recycled Traps
An email address that has been abandoned or forgotten for a long time can be a trap. It’s also a good idea to remove any dormant or expired addresses from your list. This will help you maintain the health of your contact database and keep your sender reputation in good standing.
Typically, the most important thing to do to prevent spam traps is to avoid renting or purchasing lists. These are poor ways to accumulate contacts and they can be a major source of spam traps on your list.
Other methods to prevent them include using email validation on contact lists and ensuring that subscribers have a double opt-in so they can confirm their interest in receiving your content. This way, they’ll be sure that they truly want to receive your emails and won’t mark them as spam or delete them.
Lastly, it’s also a good idea to regularly monitor your contact list for spam traps and delete them before they become active. This will keep your contact list clean and prevent you from losing valuable subscribers because of a bad list quality issue. If you follow these three tips, you’ll be able to avoid all of the pitfalls that can lead to spam traps. And the best part? You’ll still be able to use email marketing as part of your online marketing strategy!