What is a spam trap email address? (Or, if you prefer the one word version, what is a spamtrap email address?) Perhaps more importantly, why do they matter? Here we explain spam traps, and how to avoid spam traps. People used to not really believe that spam traps existed, at least not so many of them that an email sender would really need to worry about having a spam trap on their mailing list. But they do exist, they are everywhere, and as an email sender you do have to worry about avoiding them. So let's start by explaining the definition of a spam trap, and where they come from.
Most (but not all) email tester and email list cleaning and validation services are generally frowned on by many (if not most) inbox providers and ISPs, and many consider their use to be a sign that you may be a spammer. The rise of list cleaning (also known as "list hygiene") and email tester services, by which we mean email address validation and verification services, has tracked in tandem with the rise of new ways to detect spamming activities, including adding email addresses to mailing lists without consent. It's this last bit, the "adding email addresses to a mailing list without consent" that is the sticking point, and it is that activity which list hygiene services are, for the most part, intended to facilitate. Which is why they are disdained by the email receiving industries (inbox providers, ISPs, and spam filtering services). There's a reason that they are called "list cleaning" services; and if you are building your mailing list with consent then your list won't be dirty and need cleaning. Note that it's important to distinguish these services that offer just these list "hygiene" services, and those who help you to not only clean up your email list, but also to make sure that you are following best practices.
If you are looking for re-engagement campaign examples, look no further. Properly conducting an email re-engagement campaign, and following re-engagement campaign best practices, is critical to your email deliverability. One misstep and all of your email can start going to the spam folder, if not being outright blocked as "spam". In this article we outline the 6 steps to a successful re-engagement campaign. Then, once you have conducted your successful re-engagement campaign, it’s important to consistently email those re-engaged subscribers! We include a real-life re-engagement email campaign example, showing how doing this carefully, correctly, and following these points, can lead to success.
There's a reason that email hygiene services are so popular: following regular email list hygiene best practices not only keeps email deliverability from tanking, but will also boost your list's performance to the moon! Regular mailing list maintenance gives you amazing open and click-through rates, and not just because you've removed the dead wood. So many email senders who know that they should follow email hygiene best practices often just can't bring themselves to abandon inactive subscribers. However, once you realize just how incredibly responsive a leaner, meaner list can be you'll not only want to perform mail hygiene maintenance regularly, you'll actually look forward to it, because it's the secret sauce that will keep you ahead of your competition. We call this secret sauce "compounded deliverability".
Often the way that you find out that a user's email address is no longer valid is that you get a bounce back ("user not found"). But sometimes a user will switch email addresses, and they will actually try to notify you. What do you do then?
You'd think that by now people would understand that spam complaints impact your deliverability, both to the inbox and, ultimately, even to the inbox provider themselves. Yet we regularly get questions and comments, both in the course of our business day, and in casual conversation, which make clear that there is something that people just aren't grokking, so here it is, put as plainly and clearly as we can put it: If you get too many spam complaints YOUR EMAIL IS GOING TO START GOING TO THE JUNK FOLDER and may eventually be blocked. Period.
Sender Reputation Data (SRD) can refer either to the data related to your email sending reputation generally, or to Microsoft's Windows Live Sender Reputation Data (WSRD or WLSRD) program. In either case our SuretyMail email reputation certification can help!
As we've talked about at length before, web-based email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, take into account the open rates and click-through rates associated with the email that you send to their users. If your rates are too low, they will start putting your email in the spam folder. But in addition to the obvious concerns and issues related to open rates, there is another aspect of these web-based mail providers - and Gmail in particular - to which nobody gives a thought, even though it is quietly killing email deliverability for countless legitimate, ethical email marketers and other email senders.
