Message Systems launched a cool new tool recently, called The Validator.

It's a free web application that enables email senders to test the deliverability quality and authentication settings of their messages prior to sending.

It does this by flagging and identifying issues or failures for the major email authentication and validation schemes used today, including DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance).

Having spam traps in your emailing list is a big problem. They damage your email reputation, resulting in your emails getting stuck in spam filters. That’s why, as an email marketer, you should do everything in your power to prevent spam traps from ending up in your databases.

What are spam traps?

Spam traps are seemingly valid email addresses that are created with the sole purpose of identifying spam emails. These addresses are scattered over various locations on the internet, without ever using them to actually send emails.

Should any emails arrive on these addresses, then there is no other explanation possible than being the result of harvesting. Or at least, that is the idea.

So what’s wrong with that idea?

In general? Not much. But there are ways that spam traps can end up on the emailing lists of legitimate email marketers, in the end unjustly landing them on various blacklists.

How does that happen?

For spammers, it is in their interest to damage various blacklists’ credibility by luring legitimate email marketers into a spam trap. So if they get suspicious that certain email addresses are spam traps, they will sign up these addresses up for bona fide emailings.
The more often this happens, the less reliable a spam trap becomes, damaging the credibility of the blacklist that resulted out of that trap.

Also, a lot of email providers use invalid email addresses as spam traps. They will then monitor emailings that are sent to addresses that have never existed for example. Or in many cases they even use email addresses that were once valid, but are now expired.
So if someone signs up for your emailings and changes his email address after a while, this could lead to you being placed on a blacklist.

What can I do to prevent sending emails to spam traps?

There are a few precautions you can take to prevent spam traps from ending up on your address list:

Verification

Make sure that anyone signing up for your emailings is human. You could do so by adding a (re)captcha to your sign up form, or by requiring someone to log in before he can sign up. One of the big issues with this method however is that it annoys a lot of people, raising the bar for someone to sign up.

Double opt in

Double check every opt in for your newsletters by letting someone confirm his subscription by clicking a link in an email (or by sending a reply).

Keep your database clean

Always be sure to maintain a clean database. Don’t limit yourself to only processing opt outs, but also check for bounces that might be the results of expired email addresses.

What it comes down to

In the end, spam traps are not the cause but a symptom of the problem. An email list filled with spam traps is a sign of a corrupted database. Always be careful when gathering opt ins, and make sure to keep a clean database.

Michael
Linthorst (1976) is an internet entrepreneur and CEO of Copernica Marketing Software. 10
years ago Michael set up Copernica together with his business partner.
Copernica is now one of the most powerful email service providers in Europe. It
provides marketing software which enables its users to single-handedly set up
(automated) campaigns using email, mobile, web pages, social media or print.

Next to full-time
entrepreneur, Michael is also an avid blogger on subjects such as email
marketing, database marketing and eCommerce.

Would you like to become a guest blogger on this blog as well? Get in touch!

Last week I presented a webinar hosted by Litmus about email deliverability best practices. You can view the slides below and view the archived webinar here.

http://b.scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js?c1=7&c2=7400849&c3=1&c4=&c5=&c6=

In an interview with Direct Mag, email deliverability guru Laura Atkins provides these tips on how to monitor email deliverability:

1. Sign up for Feedback Loops (here's a current list of available FBLs). For small senders, the FBL may be able to be processed by hand. Medium-size senders may need to develop some tools for processing ARF messages.
2. Check free reputation monitoring sites such as Sender Score and SenderBase to identify if there are any reputation problems.
3. Monitor delivery logs to identify if any ISP is blocking outright [5xx responses]. This will also show rate limiting [4xx responses], which often is the first sign of a problem at a specific ISP.
4. Set up dedicated accounts at major ISPs—Yahoo!, AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail—and add those accounts to every mailing. You can also talk to employees and determine if they have accounts at some of the for-pay ISPs and would be willing to designate one of their e-mail addresses for business use.
5. If the senders continue to have problems they can either hire a consultant to help them identify underlying issues causing delivery problems or go to a certification service.

I highly recommend reading the entire interview here.

In this 1-minute video, Stephanie Miller talks about why good emails get blocked as bad:

As you know, tomorrow I'm hosting a webinar for the members of the Email Marketer's Club in which Stephanie will talk about these things in much more detail, so make sure you reserve your seat here.

In this 5-minute video, Stephanie Miller shares what she's learned at the MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Summit last January. Some great take-aways here, so make sure you watch the video:

As you might know, Stephanie Miller will be a speaker at a webinar that I'm hosting next Tuesday. In this webinar she'll talk about why your campaigns are not reaching the inbox and what you can do to solve that. Don't worry, it won't be a pitch to become a Return Path customer, I'll make sure of that! 😉 More info here.