How to clean spamtraps from your contact list

If there is one thing that can hurt the results of your mailings, and badly, it is sending to spamtrap email addresses (trap emails).

It is something you should avoid at all costs, so in this article we are going to give you some strategies to clean these pesky email addresses out of your contact list.

First of all, let’s recall what a spamtrap is:

· What are spamtraps? Definition of “spam trap” or “trap mail”

“Spam traps” (also known as “trap mail”) are email addresses created specifically to identify unwanted email or “spam”.

These addresses are usually added to email lists in order to identify senders who have not obtained proper consent to send emails or who are not following email marketing best practices.

There are different types of “spam traps”, from those created from old email addresses that are no longer in use to those created specifically to catch unwanted emails.

In any case, if an email address is identified as a “spam trap”, emails sent to that address will be marked as spam and the domain sending those emails may be blocked.

That is why it is important to make sure the email lists used in your email marketing campaigns are clean and up to date, so you avoid sending emails to unwanted or inactive addresses, which could put your email domain’s reputation at risk.

· How to clean spamtraps from your contact list

Check the quality of your list

The first thing you should do is review the quality of your email list and make sure that all subscribers have given their consent to receive emails.

If you have old or inactive email addresses on your list, remove them so you don’t send emails to addresses that may have turned into “spam traps”.

Use email validation tools

You can use email validation tools to identify email addresses that may be “spam traps”.

These tools can check whether an email address is valid, whether it has been used recently, or whether it has been identified as a “spam trap”.

Segment your list

You can segment your email list to send emails only to subscribers who actively engage with your messages and have opened your recent emails.

This will let you identify and remove the email addresses that have not been actively engaging with your emails.

Use ethical email marketing practices

Finally, you should follow email marketing best practices to avoid sending unwanted emails.

This includes obtaining proper consent to send emails, using relevant and personalized subject lines and email content, and giving subscribers the option to unsubscribe from your email list at any time.

Re-engagement campaigns

You can launch re-engagement campaigns to try to win back the inactive subscribers on your email list.

If a subscriber hasn’t interacted with your emails for a certain period of time, their email address may have turned into a “spam trap”.

With a re-engagement campaign, you can offer incentives for subscribers to interact with your emails again, or ask them to confirm their subscription to check that they are still interested in receiving your messages.

Manual email address verification

You can manually verify your subscribers’ email addresses to identify those that may be “spam traps”.

This option can be slower and requires more resources, but it can be effective at identifying email addresses that automated email validation tools cannot detect.

Hire a list cleaning service

If you have a very large email list and don’t have the time or resources to clean it manually, you might consider hiring a list cleaning service.

These services use advanced email validation and verification techniques to identify and remove unwanted email addresses or “spam traps” from your email list.

· But there is some bad news

The bad news is that we can’t offer you a list of spamtraps that you could download and use to remove those addresses from your contact list.

That would be great, right?

It certainly would, but no such list exists.

► Why is there no downloadable list of spamtrap emails?

To answer this question, we first need to ask another one:

Who can know whether an email address is “good” or a spamtrap?

Most of the time, the ones who know are the various ISPs (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc.), that is, the companies that can check whether that email address belongs to someone or not.

Can they provide this information so we know whether we are sending to spamtraps?

They could, but no, they don’t.

The number (actual or approximate), but not which ones they are, so we are more or less back where we started.

We know we have a problem, but we don’t know which email addresses are causing it.

· OK, but which email addresses are likely to be spamtraps?

Although there is no list, there are some things you can watch out for.

Careful, that doesn’t mean they are spamtraps!

They are just things to watch out for.

► It includes a person’s name

Ideally, the email addresses you send your mailings to should include a person’s name, a nickname, or anything else that shows the address really belongs to a real person.

If you have email addresses that lack this, it may be a warning sign worth considering.

It may be nothing, but it is a place to start checking.

► Generic or shared email addresses

For example, we might be suspicious of addresses such as:

◆ sales@

◆ support@

◆ admin@

◆ info@

◆ Etc.

This is a tricky issue.

On the one hand, these kinds of addresses can be perfectly valid.

They are generic email addresses that many websites use.

Simply removing all of these addresses from your list could make you lose some real addresses.

On the other hand, it is quite unlikely that these addresses are used to subscribe to newsletters, since they are mostly meant for managing various aspects of a business.

So, how do these email addresses end up on contact lists?

Well, these addresses are usually published in various places on websites. So they can end up in databases without their owners knowing.

This means that:

◆ They may mark the emails they receive as spam

◆ And spamtraps may be created that look like this, since these addresses are known to seem trustworthy.

I’m not saying you should distrust these email addresses, or that they are definitely spamtraps.

Just that you should keep an eye on them.

Further down I’ll tell you how you can be more certain about these addresses.

► Abandoned and recycled email addresses

You may have once created an email account with a free provider, such as Gmail or Hotmail.

These are free email accounts, and sometimes they get abandoned over time.

People let them go and forget about them.

What happens to these addresses?

Sometimes they can be recycled, allowing another user who wants that name to register it.

Or they can be turned into spamtraps.

ISPs know that these addresses shouldn’t be receiving emails because they are no longer used, so whoever sends to them can’t have obtained them through opt-in.

Can an address be validly registered and later turn into a spamtrap?

Yes, it can happen.

Further down we’ll look at what to do in these cases.

► Email addresses with typos or from domains that no longer exist

These are usually easy to spot when reviewing your contact list. Things like:

◆ @hotmil.com

◆ @gogle.com

◆ Etc.

These errors usually happen because the data is entered incorrectly in the subscription form. If you don’t use subscription confirmation (double opt-in), these email addresses can be stored in your database without any problem, and you will try to send to them.

Sometimes they can also be spamtraps.

► To sum up

The points we have covered don’t mean that every email address you see that matches them is a spamtrap; they are just a kind of general assessment that can give you some idea.

· How can I tell if there are spamtraps on my contact list?

So far we have said that we can’t get a list of email addresses that are spamtraps.

So what now?

Our options are:

◆ 1) Take a look at your contact list following the guidelines we saw earlier.

◆ 2) Analyze the statistics of your sends (history)

◆ 3) Check whether your domain is listed on any blacklist

Point (2) can be very revealing.

If you analyze your sending history and everything seemed to be going more or less fine, with fairly steady opens and clicks, and suddenly there is a sharp drop, it is time to analyze why.

For example, if you have recently added a new database, that may be the reason.

► What if you haven’t sent a mailing before?

In that case, the recommendation would be to segment your contact list and send only to the contacts you obtained most recently.

The idea is to avoid the most serious problems without missing out on too many opportunities.

· So if you think you have spamtraps, what can you do to clean your contact list?

You may or may not like the advice I’m about to give you.

However, you can do what you do when you go to the doctor. Do what they tell you, or carry on as before. It’s your choice.

That said, if you insist on continuing to send mailings to spamtrap email addresses:

◆ It is very likely that fewer and fewer emails will reach their destination

◆ Until your domain is blocked completely and you can’t send any email that reaches its destination

At that point there is no “fix everything” button.

The longer you keep sending to spamtraps, the longer and more costly the solution will be.

Now, the advice:

◆ 1) If you noticed a change after adding a new contact list

It is very likely that the problem lies in those new contacts you added.

You can review them following the tips we covered above, or you can play it safe and delete those contacts.

Once those contacts are deleted, you can keep sending as usual.

Important

The solution won’t be immediate.

You have to keep that in mind: after removing those addresses, you will need to keep sending as usual for a while.

Little by little, over time, you will see the numbers improve.

◆ 2) If you are going to send your first mailing after a long time without sending anything (or if you have never sent one)

Segment (divide) your contact list to separate out the most recent contacts.

Set the oldest ones aside and don’t send to them; keep them in quarantine.

· 3) If you’re not quite sure what is happening, but your opens have dropped a lot

In that case, we are going to use Mailrelay’s segmentation tool.

Although you can segment by opens, my recommendation is to segment by clicks.

Why segment by clicks?

◆ To begin with, clicks show greater interest than an open.

◆ And they are much more likely to be linked to real human activity.

Can machines generate opens?

Actually, yes.

And although they can also generate clicks, clicks are still a more reliable way of finding real human contacts.

► What if this greatly reduces my contacts?

That may be exactly what happens; as I mentioned above, this is not usually a pleasant solution.

You can try segmenting by opens instead of clicks; however, it is less effective, because opens can be generated by automated systems.

Ultimately, you need to try to get an idea of the activity those contacts have had in recent months.

Keep sending to your most active contacts.

► Once the problem is solved, can I send to the other addresses again?

I don’t think that is the best idea, because you risk bringing back those contacts that are actually spamtraps, and you would be back where you started.

· In summary

If you are having deliverability problems and think they may be caused by spamtraps on your contact list, segment your contact list to extract the active contacts.

Preferably, segment by clicks.

And don’t forget that the solution will take time; it is not an immediate process.

I hope you find this guide useful.

If you have any questions, you can contact our support team.

Spamtraps are just one part of your list hygiene: also find out what a bounce is and how to handle it properly to protect your sender reputation.

Jose Argudo

CMO at Mailrelay. Writes about email marketing, copywriting and conversion for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

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