Do you know spam traps, honeypots and trash domains?

Not an issue for companies that take great care never to write to contacts who have unsubscribed from promotional email communication? Wrong Such senders can also suddenly find themselves on a blacklist — for example when a so-called spam trap is hidden in their mailing lists.

What are spam traps?

Spam traps are email addresses that are used by email service providers and blacklist operators to identify potential spammers. Such email addresses are often indistinguishable from “normal” email addresses with the naked eye — they look completely unsuspicious. Sometimes a spam trap is an address that was actually registered and used by a real person a long time ago, but was then shut down. Approximately six to twelve months after it has been deactivated, this address can be reactivated as a spam trap. The new owner of the spam trap, e.g. an email service provider or a blacklist operator, registers exactly which emails end up in the inbox of the reactivated address.

Purchased lists in particular pose another risk: honeypots. Honeypots are a special type of spam trap: email addresses that were never actually used to communicate but were instead published on the Internet — in places that a normal user does not see. Honeypots are usually only discovered by so-called “harvesters”. These are programs that systematically search the World Wide Web for e-mail addresses in order to “harvest” them — for address lists that are then offered for sale.

The tricky thing about it: If you write a spam trap, the owner of this spam trap concludes that, in the best case, your mailing lists have not been cleaned for a long time — or that you are even writing to honeypot addresses for which you could never have received an opt-in. As a result, as a potential spammer, you may end up on a blacklist and your campaigns can no longer be delivered to all recipients.

... and then there are trash mail addresses

Trashmail addresses are simply email addresses that are only used to protect yourself from unwanted advertising. Imagine that you want to download free software or interesting information on the Internet. You'll need to sign up with an email address, but you suspect that you'll receive unsolicited promotional emails after signing up. In this case, you can set up a trash mail address that you only use for this specific purpose: to be able to register without receiving unsolicited promotional emails to your “correct” e-mail address.

There are now numerous providers of “disposable addresses”, i.e. for addresses that only exist for a short period of time and are then deleted — or can even turn into spam traps.

Sending marketing emails to trashmail addresses, can have a negative impact on the deliverability of your campaigns — and honestly: Do you want to send emails to people who think your content is “trash”?

What can I do to avoid blacklisting?

A good broadcaster reputation is easy to lose and difficult to restore. Getting removed from a blacklist is often a lengthy process. Here are our top 5 tips to avoid blacklisting problems caused by spam traps as early as possible:

1. Never send emails to rented or purchased lists.

Don't do it even if the provider credibly assures you that the addresses all came from absolutely legal sources, were handpicked and guaranteed to have an opt-in. Sending emails on your own behalf to contacts who have not agreed to send you promotional information is illegal. And even if this would not give you any tangible legal problems in practice — deliverability problems would be inevitable in any case.

2. Don't send emails to addresses for which you have already registered a “hard bounce.”

Receiving email servers will inform you when a written address does not (anymore) exist. In many professional email delivery systems, you can easily recognize these so-called “hard bounces.” Invalid email addresses in your mailing lists aren't simply harmless ballast. They can be reactivated as spam traps after a few months and cause you a lot of trouble. Constantly high hard bounce rates also mean that many email service providers reduce your sender reputation — and may even block your emails.

3. Treat addresses from which you have not registered a response for a long time separately.

Recipients who don't respond to your emails for many months may well not be real recipients at all. And if so? These are contacts who are obviously not interested in your offers, at least for a longer period of time — and who regularly delete your emails unopened or punish you for your persistence by clicking on the “spam” button in case of doubt. Both damage your broadcaster reputation. Therefore, do not treat inactive addresses as you would any other address. Remove them from the mailing list for your regular email communication. You should also be extremely careful with reactivation campaigns: Monitor these campaigns closely so that you can cancel delivery in an emergency before too much damage occurs — and calculate twice: You've probably already thought about how much economic potential there is in your “sleeping contacts.” But have you also calculated how much long-term damage a reactivation campaign can do to your sender reputation? How many emails from subsequent campaigns automatically end up in spam folders instead of in your recipients' inboxes? And how many interactions and conversions are slipping through your fingers?

4. Be careful when shipping to addresses that you haven't written to for a long time!

Addresses that you haven't contacted for a long period of time (e.g. more than half a year) could have turned into spam traps by now without you being able to notice it. This is because if a contact has not received an email for a long period of time, you could not register a hard bounce if the address was switched off in the meantime. Therefore, you should also treat e-mail addresses that you have not written to for a long time separately and with great care.

5. Find known spam traps and trash mail addresses in your address database!

It's not that easy at all. However, we are happy to help you find the vast majority of spam traps and trash mail addresses in your address database and clean up your mailing lists.

You can find more information about our list cleaning service here.