Spam traps are email addresses that should never be part of your mailing list, and if you have them in your contact list, it can damage your reputation. They can also be flagged by spam compliance agencies and blacklist providers, so it’s important to remove spam traps them from your list.
Pristine Traps
Pure spam traps are created by Internet Service Providers, but they’ve never been used by a real user. They are the most dangerous type of spam trap because they can damage senders’ reputations if an anti-spam organization finds them in their contact lists. These types of addresses are typically acquired through scraping email address databases from public web pages or purchasing lists with email addresses that have been scraped.
Recycled Traps
Recycled spam traps are also created by Internet Service Providers but they’re actually email addresses that were previously used by a real user and then abandoned. They’re usually found in purchased lists and are considered a poor way to gather contacts.
Invalid Addresses
Invalid addresses are not as harmful to your sending reputation as pristine spam traps, but they can be just as damaging for deliverability purposes. This is because these addresses aren’t verified by you as you collect them or before you send your first email. They also won’t be able to complete the double opt-in process you require before they can receive your emails.
Dead Addresses
Dead addresses are a type of spam trap that can be created by a contact submitting your subscription form with a typo. This can include the typos, “gnail” instead of “gmail” or “yaho” instead of “yahoo”.
These types of addresses are not validated by you as you collect them or before you start sending your first email. This can cause them to have hard bounces and resulting in poor deliverability for your campaigns.
You can manually verify these types of emails as you collect them in your apps and websites with a validation tool like MailerCheck, or you can automate the entire process using a real-time email API. This allows you to automatically filter out bad addresses as you collect them and save time and effort running regular cleaning jobs.
Removing Spam Traps
To effectively get rid of spam traps from your contact list, you’ll need to do a comprehensive audit of your data and your list hygiene practices. This will help you identify the segment that is causing your deliverability problems.
The best way to avoid getting spam traps on your list is to maintain a healthy contact list and follow the rules of permission-based email marketing. This will not only keep you out of the spam folder, but it will also increase your brand’s credibility in the eyes of subscribers and potential customers.
Removing spam traps can be a daunting task, but it’s not impossible to do. It’s just a matter of finding the right tools to do it and executing on them.
To learn how to clean your contact list, read our free guide on How to Remove Bad Emails from Your Lists.