Should You Send Marketing Emails to TikTok Shop Proxy Addresses?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 4 May 2025
Updated 27 Aug 2025
6 min read
Recently, I've encountered a discussion around a specific type of email address originating from TikTok Shop. These addresses often appear in a format like randomalphanumericstring@scs.tiktokw.us. They are essentially proxy or encrypted email addresses provided by TikTok Shop to protect buyer privacy during purchases.
The core question many marketers are asking is whether these addresses are suitable for marketing communications. While they serve as a forwarding service for necessary transactional communication, using them for marketing purposes can lead to significant issues, including high bounce rates and potential deliverability problems.
TikTok Shop utilizes these unique proxy email addresses, such as those found under the scs.tiktokw.us domain, primarily as a privacy shield for its buyers. This mechanism is similar to a hide my email feature, ensuring that sellers do not directly receive a buyer's personal email address during a transaction.
When an email is sent to one of these encrypted proxy addresses, TikTok Shop's system acts as an intermediary. It receives the email and then relays it to the buyer's actual email inbox. This process is designed to facilitate crucial communications like order updates, shipping notifications, and customer service messages, maintaining a seamless transaction experience without exposing sensitive buyer information.
However, this setup creates a distinct challenge for marketers. The addresses are often temporary or anonymized, making them unsuitable for building a long-term engaged email list. Their primary purpose is privacy and transactional forwarding, not marketing consent.
Understanding how email aliases impact deliverability is crucial. While beneficial for privacy, these aliases do not translate well to sustained marketing efforts, as their nature inherently limits their usability beyond immediate transactional needs.
The deliverability challenges for marketing campaigns
One of the most immediate issues encountered when sending marketing emails to TikTok Shop proxy addresses is the high rate of deferral timeouts and hard bounces. This suggests that the proxy service either rejects marketing content, that the addresses are truly temporary and expire quickly, or that they are simply not configured to accept non-transactional mail.
High bounce rates are a serious red flag for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and can significantly damage your sender reputation. ISPs interpret frequent bounces as a sign that you are sending to invalid or unengaged addresses, which can lead to your emails being marked as spam or even your domain being placed on a blacklist (or blocklist).
While transactional emails like order confirmations may successfully pass through these proxy services, promotional or marketing content is far more likely to face rejection. The design of these proxy addresses prioritizes privacy and essential communication, not broad-scale marketing, leading to a stark difference in deliverability outcomes between email types.
The risk of being blacklisted or blocklisted, even temporarily, can have long-lasting negative effects on all your email campaigns, not just those aimed at TikTok Shop customers. Maintaining a clean list and avoiding known problematic addresses is fundamental to good email hygiene.
Why high bounce rates are critical
Decreased sender reputation: ISPs view high bounces as a sign of poor list quality or spamming.
Increased spam complaints: If emails unexpectedly reach a real inbox, recipients might mark them as spam.
Potential blocklisting: Your domain or IP could end up on an email blacklist, affecting all email delivery.
Wasted marketing efforts: Sending to invalid addresses wastes resources and distorts engagement metrics.
Legal compliance and user consent
Beyond deliverability, there are crucial legal and ethical considerations regarding consent. Email marketing regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States, generally require explicit or implied consent before sending commercial emails. A purchase, while establishing a business relationship, doesn't automatically grant permission for unsolicited marketing, especially when a proxy address is involved.
The very nature of TikTok Shop's proxy addresses underscores a buyer's intention for privacy. Sending marketing messages to these addresses, without a clear and separate opt-in, could be seen as circumventing that privacy. You can review the TikTok Shop Privacy Policy to understand their approach to user data and communication.
When customers engage through a platform like TikTok Shop, they are providing their information under the terms of that platform, which often prioritizes privacy. Extracting and using these proxy emails for direct marketing without an explicit consent mechanism on your end may violate customer trust and potentially lead to complaints, further harming your sender reputation.
Clients often do a full data pull of all order email addresses from integrations like Shopify, which might include these proxy addresses. It's crucial for marketers to avoid emailing certain domains that indicate privacy-protected or temporary nature, regardless of whether they technically appear on a list.
Transactional emails
Purpose: Essential communications like order confirmations, shipping updates, and customer service.
Suitability: Generally permissible and expected. Often successfully delivered through proxy systems.
Focus: Ensuring a smooth customer experience and providing necessary information related to a purchase.
Marketing emails
Purpose: Promotional content, newsletters, sales announcements, and other non-essential communications.
Suitability: High risk of bounces and deliverability issues. Not intended for this use.
Given the privacy design, deliverability challenges, and consent issues, I strongly recommend that marketers avoid sending unsolicited marketing emails to scs.tiktokw.us proxy addresses. The potential harm to your sender reputation and compliance standing far outweighs any perceived benefit.
It is crucial to proactively clean your email lists by identifying and excluding these proxy domains. If your current systems, such as Shopify integrations, are automatically pulling these addresses into your marketing lists, you must implement filters to prevent them from receiving marketing campaigns.
Instead of relying on proxy addresses, focus on legitimate list growth strategies. Provide clear opportunities for TikTok Shop customers to opt into your marketing communications directly, such as a dedicated sign-up form on your website after purchase, or within a follow-up transactional email that offers a clear opt-in choice. This ensures explicit consent and a higher quality, engaged audience.
Ongoing monitoring of your deliverability metrics, including bounce rates and engagement, is essential. This will help you identify any unintended consequences and ensure your email program remains healthy and effective. Remember, a smaller, highly engaged list is always more valuable than a large list filled with unengaged or invalid addresses.
Email Type
Purpose
Suitability for Proxy Address
Deliverability Impact (Marketing)
Compliance Risk
Transactional
Order confirmations, shipping updates, customer service
Proactively segment your email lists to exclude TikTok Shop proxy domains to prevent bounces and protect your sender reputation.
Always seek explicit opt-in for marketing emails from TikTok Shop customers, separate from their purchase transaction.
Regularly monitor your email deliverability metrics to quickly identify and address any unusual bounce patterns or blacklisting issues.
Common pitfalls
Automatically adding TikTok Shop proxy addresses to your general marketing lists without proper segmentation.
Ignoring deferral timeouts and high bounce rates from these addresses, which can lead to broader deliverability problems.
Assuming that a purchase on TikTok Shop implies consent for receiving ongoing marketing communications.
Expert tips
Focus on creating clear, value-driven incentives for customers to provide their direct email addresses for marketing.
Educate clients about the difference between transactional and marketing email consent, especially for marketplace integrations.
Use email validation services to identify and remove problematic or temporary email addresses from your lists before sending.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says: TikTok shops implement a 'hide my email' feature for purchases, which is a key privacy measure.
2025-07-15 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says: Clients utilizing Shopify integrations should ensure they exclude emails sourced from the TikTok domain for any long-term communications, as these clients are designed to be anonymous.
2025-07-16 - Email Geeks
Our recommendation for TikTok Shop proxy emails
Ultimately, sending marketing emails to TikTok Shop proxy addresses is generally not advisable. While these addresses serve a vital role in protecting buyer privacy and facilitating transactional communications, their nature makes them unsuitable for marketing. Marketers should prioritize explicit consent, rigorous list hygiene, and a clear understanding of email deliverability best practices to maintain a healthy sender reputation and avoid issues like high bounce rates or being placed on a blocklist (or blacklist).
