Email Marketing Best Practices: Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap Contents
Introduction 3
Spam traps explained 4
What if you get trapped? 6
Your risk of being trapped 7
How to avoid spam traps 8
2 Email Marketing Best Practices: Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap Introduction
Were you aware “one spam trap can reduce your Sender Score more than 20 points damaging your
reputation and decreasing your inbox placement rates to 81% and lower?”4
The email inbox can easily be argued as the most sought after and precious piece of electronic real-
estate available to healthcare marketers. Companies venture to extraordinary lengths to ensure their
messages gain ‘safe-passage’ into these storehouses. Why then, do strategically designed, well-
coded, and overall benign messages still fall prey to spam traps? How does your deliverability rate
compare to other industry leaders? Has your sender score suffered substantial damage due to poor
list hygiene? If so, then it’s time to change your email strategy.
Title of the book 3 Spam traps explained
First, let’s distinguish the difference between a spam
folder and an actual spam trap.
A spam folder, also called a junk folder or junk
mailbox is a repository for storing unwanted emails,
and is created by mail servers as well as the user’s
email client. In some mail programs, the messages in
the spam folder can be sorted and viewed by the spam
filter’s rating, which is a percentage of confidence that
the message is junk.
Much different than a folder within an email program, Even good marketers can be caught a is actually an email address/account spam trap by email spam traps. The type of spam trap you hit can be an indicator of designed to capture email abuse – from very malicious where your problems may lie. messages – to the mostly harmless, but bothersome,
notifications. Hotmail postmaster Travis Wetherbee
describes a spam trap as “one of the most widely
exploited fraud management tools utilized by Internet
Service Providers (ISPs). “ ISPs use spam traps to lure
spam from, you guessed it, spammers. Through the
use of spam traps, ISPs can keep track of these
individuals and block the IPs of those sending email to
spam trap addresses.” 1
Email Marketing Best Practices: 4 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap There are two primary types of spam traps employed by ISPs designed explicitly to impact sender
score reputation: Pure spam traps and Recycled spam traps.
Pure spam traps have the largest impact on your reputation. They are “created for the sole purpose of
trapping spammers, and can impact your ability to send emails in the future.”3
The second type is known under several different aliases – (dead addresses, dormant addresses,
inactive addresses etc.) – however, it is most widely known as the Recycled spam trap. Recycled
spam traps are email addresses that were once owned by customers of the ISP/email provider (hence
the name recycled) that have stopped using the accounts. After a pre-defined but undisclosed period
of inactivity the ISP will turn the account off and return hard bounce or SMTP errors to senders (for
example “550 – Unknown User”). This process is known as “gravestoning” accounts. After an email
address has been gravestoned from 30 to 90 days, depending on the ISP, some addresses will be
reactivated. Those addresses marked for reactivation then become Recycled spam traps. Any email
delivered to these accounts is recorded as a spam trap hit.1
Email Marketing Best Practices: 5 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap What happens if you get caught in a spam trap
Spam trap consequences depend on the type of
Possible Spam Trap Consequences spam trap that was hit and vary from ISP to ISP.
Assuming your organization has built up solid IP • Your sender reputation will be damaged, stream health over time, you may not be affected causing bounce rates to increase, and as a result your percentage of delivered (to the as much as a smaller company who purchases a inbox) emails will decrease. list and happens to hit 1-2 pure spam traps within
a week. If a smaller company’s IP address hits • An ISP may decide to throttle your campaigns, meaning it will limit the number a pure spam trap numerous times, “it could take of emails you send in a certain time period. anywhere from 6 months to a year to recover a
good sender reputation.” 3 • Your IP address could be blocked by an ISP. Even worse, an entire IP range could If you’ve hit a recycled spam trap, the be blocked, impacting not only your consequence isn’t as detrimental. While you may reputation but other IP addresses as well. experience delivery issues, the impact isn’t as
• You could become blacklisted and your great as hitting a pure spam trap. It’s more likely emails will likely be send to recipients’ junk you’ll just be sent to the junk folder. Your first folder. infringement against a recycled spam trap will still
• If your IP address or domain is identified act as a signal to ISPs that they should track you by ISPs as a repeat offender your emails to see if you continue to hit that recycled email will likely be automatically rejected. address. If you do, it’s a sign you practice poor
email list hygiene, and that you likely haven’t had
a relationship with that person in quite some time.
Email Marketing Best Practices: 6 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap Your risk of being trapped
Let’s face it. It’s hard to be an email marketer if you can’t
send out any emails. If you’ve participated in any of the
following activities, it’s possible you could have a spam
trap on your list that is impacting email deliverability:
• Started emailing an extremely old portion of your list
• Sent messages to role accounts (example:
[email protected], [email protected])
• Purchased an email list from an untrustworthy third
party vendor
• Targeted unengaged subscribers Poor list management practices • Use a single opt-in process result in decreased email marketing performance. Spam traps lurking in If you are wondering whether you have hit a spam trap, your email database could be damaging your sender reputation and consider your deliverability and bounce rate performance. even costing your business money.
If delivery rates are low, bounce rates are higher than
normal, and email engagement is poor, then you may be
suffering from a spam trap hit. The truth is, “if you hit a
spam trap, you’re certainly not going to receive a bounce
notification, and there’s not much email getting through for
people to actually engage with!”3
Email Marketing Best Practices: 7 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap How to avoid spam traps
Protecting your sender reputation and avoiding a spam trap begins with quality data:
(1) Don’t purchase email lists from an unfamiliar “list company”. Seek a reputable data management
company that provides access to its database on a rental or license basis, and can also provide contact
information for the recipient (not just an email address).
(2) Become efficient at removing hard bounces from your database (we assist our clients in managing
this process).
(3) Maintain and utilize suppression lists for every campaign.
(4) Practice good list hygiene practices by continuously cleaning your list.
(5) Remove unresponsive and disengaged subscribers.
HealthLink Dimensions is committed to the success of our clients’ email marketing campaigns. We hope
you have gained a much better understanding of Pure and Recycled spam traps and the lasting impact
they can both have on your marketing success. If data quality has been an issue for your organization, we
can help! HealthLink Dimensions offers access to the largest Physician and Healthcare Professional
Email Database (connecting you with more than 1.4 million primary, corporate and B2B email
addresses). Lastly, many organizations do not have the tools and resources to handle the volume or
complexity associated with large email marketing campaigns. If that describes your situation, allow us to
leverage our expertise and trusted IP reputation to maximize the reach of your campaign.
References: (1) http://bit.ly/Zw503O (2) http://bit.ly/1xGyppQ (3) http://bit.ly/1CHxMMM (4) http://bit.ly/1E57hCA
Email Marketing Best Practices: 8 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap About the author
Justin Hipps brings over 10 years of experience in healthcare IT and financial performance analytics to his current role as manager of email strategy and analytics.
He specializes in client data management, database analytics, email marketing, report building, and business development/marketing support. Justin employs his BI expertise in providing internal and external customers with visual analytics to communicate stories and trends within the data.
Contact Justin or the HealthLink Dimensions team at
404.250.3900
HealthLinkDimensions.com
Email Marketing Best Practices: 9 Sidestepping the Elusive Spam Trap