Getting your email list clean is essential to keeping your deliverability strong. It’s also an important part of staying compliant with the latest regulations. Here are a few ways you can keep your email list clean spam traps and avoid hitting spam traps that could damage your sending reputation:
1. Recycled Traps
Spam traps are addresses that are no longer in use by their original users. These can be addresses of people who have left a company or are no longer working for it. These addresses aren’t as damaging to a sender’s reputation as pure spam traps, but they do signal to antispam authorities that a sender is not taking care of their contact lists.
2. Pristine Traps
The most common type of spam trap is a pristine spam trap, which is an email address that has never been used by anyone who was able to confirm their subscription. These can be sourced from public websites that were scrapped for email addresses by spammers or someone who purchased a contact list.
These can be a good way to increase your reach, but they can also cause some issues down the road. Since the email addresses can’t opt-in to receive emails from you, it can be difficult to get your content out to these contacts, and the recipients may even flag them as spam.
3. Closed Email accounts
Another common type of spam trap is an email address that has been closed by its owner. This can be a problem for many email marketers because it’s hard to determine whether an address belongs to a real person or not.
4. Using a Double Opt-in for Subscriptions
Another way to prevent spam traps from being added to your mailing list is to make sure subscribers actually want your emails by incorporating double opt-ins into your subscription forms. This will ensure that recipients are truly interested in receiving your emails, and it’s easier to verify that the list is legitimate before you start sending.
5. Avoid Buying Contact Lists
Spam traps are commonly found in purchased email lists, so avoiding these types of lists is key to keeping your email deliverability strong. However, if you’re not a professional list broker and need to buy a contact list, be sure that the addresses on it have been verified and that they have given their consent to receive your emails.
6. A Verification Process That Keeps Your Mailing List Safe
In addition to these practices, a verification process that ensures that your list is accurate will help protect your sender reputation and your sender domain from spam traps. It can be a tedious task, but it’s necessary if you want to avoid these problems.
7. Removing Suspected Spam Traps
It’s not always easy to remove spam traps from your email lists, but it’s necessary if you don’t want your sending reputation to be damaged. The best way to do this is to unsubscribe the addresses that are suspicious or have a history of hard bounces, spam complaints, or other issues.