A spam trap is not just when you get your hand caught in a tin of processed, canned meat. I mean, it is an equally unpleasant situation, but one is a little more present in marketing than the other. And no, it's not the one you might think.
A spam trap is an email address used by Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, to identify senders who aren't playing the best-practise-email game.
Basically, it's what it says on the tin - a spam trap is used to identify and monitor spam email.
It's also a type of honeypot, using fake email addresses to bait scammers. Overall, this reduces the amount of spam traffic on ISP networks.
These spam trap emails may have been legit at one point, but are now abandoned or invalid. So, if someone gets a new job, their work email would become invalid. This means that any contact which hasn't opened an email in a year may have the potential to become a spam trap.
A spam trap also uses filters to block certain emails that have a history of sending spam. It'll do this by analysing all or part of an email address to identify it, and can then decide whether or not to mark it as a spam-sending address.
The thing is spam traps can unintentionally block legitimate emails too, damaging a sender's reputation and email deliverability. This can even lead to the sender's domain list or IP address being denied.
This is something that's easy to do - if you're a human being.
A spam trap has features that a normal user would notice, and would cause them to cease sending emails to the address. This could include:
So, to check if a spam trap is included in an email list, you should check email delivery rates.
If these are dropping drastically, the list may contain a spam trap. This is because spam traps don't respond to, or even open, emails sent to them. Emails are sent, but won't be registered as delivered.
It doesn't help that if the address doesn't respond or react to an email, that can damage your reputation. So, it's an imperative that you analyse your contact list, either manually or with tools.
A way to do this is to access an email blocklist. Blocklist tool vendors maintain and add to their blocklists, adding IP addresses and similar which have been reported by its user list. Senders who suspect they've been added to the list can check it, but warning: it's very difficult to get an address removed once it's on.
The consequences of this can vary. It can depend on things like the type of trap you hit, how many times you hit it, and how the operator handles things. But some examples can include:
So, there's a few different types of spam traps we need to go through. Know your enemy and all that.
Pristine spam traps, also called true traps or honeypots, are email addresses created to capture spammers. These are email addresses which were never used as legitimate addresses, don't subscribe to email programmes, and do not make purchases.
Many spam trap operators post these types of spam traps on various websites across the internet. They are usually hidden in the background code of webpages, and are acquired by spambots scraping email addresses. So, hitting these types of spam traps usually indicates you've got a bad data partner.
Other types of traps include:
There's a few ways spam traps can end up on your list, but all are caused by poor email list management, hygiene, and upkeep. Spam traps can often be avoided and prevented by maintaining a clean, healthy contact list and following best practises.
Although I'm sure that's easier said than done. So, let's have a look into some examples. To have the best chance of avoiding spam traps, you need to:
In order to prevent spam traps, you need to regularly clean your list.
One out of every five emails never makes it to the recipient's inbox. It might be blocked by the service provider, or go into the junk folder.
Bad deliverability leads to a bad reputation. And that just leads to even worse deliverability. It's a vicious cycle.
With a huge, unwieldy email list, you might find yourself in a difficult position. Though you might think: "Look at me, I've got all these subscribers, chomping at the bit to read my email, clicking refresh on their inbox to devour it the second it comes through", but this might only be the case for a percentage of your list.