A spam trap is atrap address created or retrieved by email providers (Gmail, Outlook, Orange etc…) or blacklist organizations (Spamhaus, SpamCop etc…).
These spamtraps are used to fight against spammers and against senders who do not respect good practices in terms of contact management.
Spam trap addresses often look like real addresses, making them almost impossible to identify in your database.
There are 3 different types of spamtrap:
Recycled address type spam traps
These are old optin email addresses that existed and then were abandoned by their users.
After a long period of inactivity, these addresses were deactivated by email providers and then recycled into spam traps to see if senders continued to target their old inactive addresses.
Invalid email address type spam traps
These are email addresses with errors in the domain after the @ (example:gnail.com;htmail.fr, yaho.cim, orange.fe, etc…)
They are useful for email providers and blacklists to check whether the collection of email addresses was of quality or not (typing error during the registration process)
pristine-type spam traps
These are addresses created on all sides by email providers or blacklists to be exclusively spam traps.
They do not belong to any user and therefore have no vocation to receive emails.
They are usually posted on public but hidden websites and are collected by spambots that scan web pages for email addresses.
The presence of spamtrap in your database is one of the factors most impacting the deliverability of your emails
If you regularly send emails to spam trap addresses, you will quickly observe a drop in your performance because more and more emails will arrive in the spam folder or even be completely blocked.
Indeed, depending onthe spam traps affected, your sending domain name and/or your IP may be blacklisted by email providers and blacklists. Your reputation may then fall sharply.
Spam traps of the recycled address and invalid email type are less sensitive because they are used to check the activity of a database and the quality of the collection respectively.
Spam traps of the pristine type are on the other hand very dangerous and can blacklist you from the first sending.
It is difficult or even impossible to identify a spamtrap in a database (especially those of pristine type and recycled address).
The ShopiMind deliverability team has access to tools that alert when a sending IP hits a spam trap. We will contact you if you target them regularly to alert you and accompany you on the steps to follow in order to no longer touch them.
Several best practices should be followed to avoid hitting spam traps when sending messages:
Never buy contact lists
When buying a list, you don't know if the email addresses have been collected correctly and therefore there is a high chance that you are buying spam traps. Don't take that risk.
Target only your most active contacts
Inactive subscribers have no value for your campaigns and some of these addresses risk being converted into spam traps. We advise you to target only contacts who have had a reaction (open or click) in the last 6 months if you regularly hit spam traps.
Validate your new email address
Use an address validation tool on your signup page to catch typos and nonexistent email addresses before they make it to your mailing list.
If possible, use double opt-in
By using the double-opt in, you can ensure that an email address belongs to a real person. This is a powerful way to spot typos and fake email addresses that could be spam traps.
Use secure forms with captcha
By securing your registration form using a captcha, you will have better control over your subscribed lists. You will avoid registrations via robots and therefore potentially the registration of spamtraps which can have a detrimental effect on your deliverability.
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