Summary
Avoiding spam traps and achieving high email deliverability is a crucial aspect of successful email marketing. It requires a multi-faceted approach, focusing heavily on list acquisition, continuous list hygiene, and understanding how mailbox providers (ISPs) evaluate sender reputation. While spam traps are a significant concern, they are often a symptom of broader issues such as poor list quality or low engagement. Effective strategies extend beyond merely avoiding these traps to building a strong, positive relationship with recipient inboxes through consistent best practices.
Key findings
- List source: The primary cause of hitting spam traps is often related to how email addresses are acquired. Purchased or non-opt-in lists are highly prone to containing spam traps.
- Verification is vital: Implementing proper email verification processes, such as double opt-in, is essential to ensure that collected addresses are valid and belong to the subscriber. This prevents fake or unused addresses from entering your list, which can later become spam traps.
- Inactive recipients: Inactive or abandoned email addresses often transform into recycled spam traps. Regularly cleaning your list to remove unengaged subscribers is a key strategy for maintaining list health and avoiding these blocklists.
- Engagement matters: Mailbox providers, especially Gmail, place significant emphasis on subscriber engagement. Sending emails to unengaged recipients, even if not spam traps, negatively impacts your sender reputation and can lead to emails landing in the spam folder.
- Proactive hygiene: Continuous list hygiene and audience segmentation based on engagement are more effective long-term strategies than solely focusing on reactive spam trap detection. To learn more about identifying these tricky addresses, read our article on how to identify email spam traps.
Key considerations
- Acquisition quality: Prioritise obtaining email addresses through transparent, permission-based methods. Avoid forcing users to provide emails to access content without clear opt-in for future communications.
- Regular cleaning: Implement a strict email list cleaning schedule. This includes removing hard bounces immediately and suppressing subscribers who show no engagement over a defined period (e.g., 6-12 months).
- Engagement strategy: Develop strategies to re-engage inactive subscribers before suppressing them, such as re-engagement campaigns. This can help improve your sender reputation and overall deliverability to key providers like Gmail.
- Content and frequency: Ensure your email content is valuable and relevant to your audience to encourage consistent engagement. Sending frequency should align with subscriber expectations and engagement levels. For more information, The CMO provides proven tips to avoid emails going to spam.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often find themselves grappling with deliverability challenges, especially when managing large lists. Their experiences highlight the direct correlation between list acquisition methods and the propensity for hitting spam traps or being put on a blocklist. The consensus among marketers points to the critical importance of legitimate, permission-based list building and ongoing list hygiene as foundational practices for maintaining good inbox placement.
Key opinions
- Source is key: The origin of email addresses is almost always the root cause of spam trap issues. If addresses are not legitimately acquired, problems will arise.
- Double opt-in is preferred: Marketers emphasize the necessity of a clear opt-in process, ideally double opt-in, to verify email addresses and subscriber intent. Without this, fake or unused addresses will proliferate.
- Forced registration pitfalls: Requiring an email address to access content without proper verification or a clear subscription opt-in often leads to lists heavily populated with spam traps and fake accounts.
- Inactive recipients are high risk: Spam traps are frequently found among inactive recipients. Filtering out those who do not engage is a direct way to reduce spam trap hits.
Key considerations
- Audit acquisition methods: Regularly review your email acquisition methods. If users can access content by providing a fake email, your list health will suffer. Explore strategies for email list validation.
- Proactive list management: Instead of waiting for deliverability issues, proactively filter out inactive recipients. This prevents future problems, including hitting spam traps.
- Verify real users: Implement a mechanism to identify if an email address truly belongs to the user who provided it. If deliverability issues occur, consider how you can diagnose email deliverability issues and prevent future occurrences. MailSoar suggests that implementing double opt-in at registration is a crucial step.
A marketer from Email Geeks explains that if you are already sending emails to a list, you should be able to filter out inactive recipients, as spam traps are frequently found among these addresses. They also suggest consulting with your email service provider's deliverability team for guidance.
A deliverability specialist from MailSoar advises that regularly cleaning contact lists and using exclusively self-acquired lists are fundamental tips for avoiding spam traps effectively.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts offer a deeper dive into the technicalities of how mailbox providers (ISPs) assess incoming mail. They explain that while spam traps are a factor, modern ISPs, particularly Gmail, often place greater weight on user engagement and overall sending patterns. This expert perspective underscores the need for a sophisticated understanding of filtering mechanisms and reputation building, moving beyond simple spam trap avoidance to comprehensive sender health.
Key opinions
- Engagement over traps: Many mailbox providers, including Gmail, do not place significant value on spam traps. Instead, they focus heavily on user interaction and whether subscribers are engaging with your messages.
- Inactive addresses are problematic: Mailing addresses that never open or engage can be perceived as abandoned accounts. Continued sending to these addresses serves as a negative signal to machine learning filters, hurting your reputation.
- Bounce handling is crucial: Actively handling bounces is important. Well-maintained spam traps might bounce mail for 6-12 months before becoming active traps. If you manage bounces effectively, the risk of hitting these is lower.
- Shared IP nuance: Experts caution against immediately blaming shared IP addresses for deliverability issues, especially with providers like Gmail, which are adept at isolating reputation based on individual sending behavior.
Key considerations
- Long-term inactivity thresholds: Consider suppressing addresses that have been inactive for 12-24 months. While this isn't solely about spam traps, it protects your sender reputation from negative engagement signals. Learn more about how abandoned email addresses impact deliverability.
- Monitor delivery to spam: Even if users do not mark your email as spam, consistent delivery to the spam folder negatively impacts your reputation. Removing these addresses helps maintain a healthier sending profile.
- Focus on engagement metrics: For providers like Gmail, the key is to ensure users are interacting with your messages (opening, clicking, replying). A sudden drop in open rates, particularly with Gmail, indicates a deliverability issue likely tied to engagement signals, not spam traps. A detailed explanation of this phenomenon can be found on Word to the Wise regarding Gmail suddenly putting mail in the bulk folder. To better understand why your emails are landing in spam, consult our guide on why your emails are going to spam.
A deliverability expert from Email Geeks explains that if you are actively handling bounces and not avoiding sending emails for more than a year, you should not have to worry about addresses turning into spam traps.
A deliverability expert from Word to the Wise states that an email address that never opens might have been abandoned by its owner, and continuing to send mail to it turns it into a negative signal for machine learning filters.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and comprehensive guides from leading email service providers and industry bodies consistently stress a set of foundational practices for optimal email deliverability. These often revolve around robust authentication, strict adherence to anti-spam laws, and vigilant content and list management. While the technical specifics can vary, the underlying principles aim to establish and maintain sender trust with ISPs and recipients alike.
Key findings
- Authentication is mandatory: Proper email domain authentication using standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is fundamental for proving your legitimacy as a sender. This is a primary factor in deliverability. For a simpler understanding, refer to a simple guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
- Permission-based lists: Building lists through explicit permission, ideally with double opt-in, is universally recommended to ensure subscriber quality and minimize spam complaints and blocklist issues.
- Content quality: Email content should be relevant, valuable, and free of elements commonly associated with spam, such as excessive capitalisation, suspicious phrasing, or broken links.
- Compliance with laws: Adhering to anti-spam laws like CAN-SPAM and GDPR is crucial. This includes providing clear unsubscribe options and maintaining accurate subscriber records.
Key considerations
- Sender reputation management: Continuously monitor your sender reputation, including bounce rates, spam complaint rates, and engagement metrics. Tools like Google Postmaster Tools can assist with this.
- List hygiene automation: Automate processes for removing invalid or unengaged addresses from your list to prevent them from becoming spam traps or hurting your sending score.
- Relevant content and frequency: Personalise your content and send at a frequency that matches subscriber expectations to encourage engagement and reduce opt-outs or spam complaints. PayPro Global outlines further steps in how to avoid email going to spam.
- Secure sending environment: Ensure your sending infrastructure is secure and properly configured. This includes correct SPF records, which help prevent unauthorised use of your domain and protect your sender reputation. For more details, refer to how to comply with Outlook's new sender requirements.
MoEngage’s guidelines state that a clean, permission-based email list is essential not only for avoiding spam traps but also for significantly enhancing engagement and deliverability rates.
Twilio’s documentation emphasizes that authenticating your email domain and maintaining proper IP allocation are foundational best practices for improving email deliverability.
