Protecting Your Reputation: How Email Validation Prevents Spam Traps

If you’re a marketer, then it’s likely that you’re no stranger to starting high-volume email campaigns for marketing projects.

However, spam traps may throw a wrench in your plans, triggering which can make it quite difficult to run email campaigns. Once sprung, spam traps blacklist the email sender and prevent them from sending emails to particular addresses altogether.

Illustration: DIW

Naturally, you would want to avoid spam traps at all costs to keep your email campaign intact, something you can do through email validation. Through this process, you can successfully keep your subscription list clean by identifying email bounces and invalid emails.

Let’s explore how spam traps work and how email validation can be a part of your email hygiene routine to keep your subscription list healthy.

How Spam Traps Work

Spam traps are email addresses employed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep spam emails in check and keep malicious emails from preying on unwitting recipients.

These are designed to effectively “trap” spam email addresses by having the spammer send an email to the trap. Once a spam trap “hits,” the ISP adds the domain and the sending IP to a third-party blocklist that filters out spam from a recipient’s inbox.

When an email address ends up springing a spam trap, it’s usually an issue with the sender’s subscription email list. Poor list collection practices or ineffective maintenance practices can cause a sender’s email address to be added to the blocklist, effectively hampering the sender’s deliverability.

There are three main categories of spam traps: pristine, recycled, and typo.

1. Pristine Spam Traps

Pristine spam traps are created specifically to identify and trap spammers, with the associated email addresses never belonging to a real person. These traps have never opted into the newsletters or email marketing from any company, and should any spam messages reach these addresses, they are immediately blocked.

2. Recycled Spam Traps

Next is the recycled spam trap, which includes email addresses that once belonged to someone but have been out of active circulation for a long time. After a long period of inactivity, ISPs and blocklist services use them as spam traps to identify and block scammers’ email addresses. Any emails sent to these addresses are considered to be spam trap hits, and these hits directly affect the sender’s reputation.

3. Typo Spam Traps

Lastly, typo spam traps are designed with common email address typos in mind to replicate incorrectly recorded email addresses. These are created when email addresses are collected at the point of sale, such as in a clothing store where a customer adds their email address. This results in a data entry error, and the error results in the creation of a typo spam trap.

How Email Validation Prevents Spam Traps

To avoid hitting spam traps and having your reputation damaged as a result, you can choose to perform email validation regularly. This is a process through which you can identify whether an email address is invalid or not, as well as keep an eye on bounced emails.

By making email validation a part of your email hygiene routine, your subscription list will become significantly cleaner and free of traps. And for that, you can try three different methods that work equally as effectively.

Let’s explore these three methods to find out how email validation prevents spam traps.

Method 1: Remove Invalid and Non-Existent Addresses

Invalid and non-existent email addresses that become spam traps make for the largest pool of spam traps on the internet. When you send emails to these addresses, the messages will bounce back to you, wasting precious resources and time while damaging your sender reputation.

Through an email checker API, you can perform email validation to check your subscription lists and remove any potential traps from the lists. This prevents bounced emails and keeps your sender reputation intact while saving time and resources.

Method 2: Identify And Tackle Pristine Spam Traps

Pristine spam traps can be difficult to identify and handle as these email addresses are created specifically to hunt for spam emails. It’s paramount not to send emails to these addresses, as any emails sent to them are considered to be spam hits.

Through email validation, you can pinpoint and remove pristine spam traps from an email list, thus protecting your sender reputation.

Method 3: Detect Typos And Mistakes

Typo spam traps can be identified rather easily through email validation as they are a result of an easily filterable accident. After the checker filters the typos out, you can manually fix them before adding the email addresses to your lists.

Final Thoughts

Having a pristine sender reputation is paramount for any digital marketer, and the best way to do so is to rely on email validation frequently.

Email validation can help you avoid spam traps of all kinds, making it a powerful tool in your arsenal. Moreover, the process can indirectly help you improve your reach by avoiding the negative consequences of triggering a spam trap hit.

It’s no wonder that many consider email validation to be an invaluable part of their marketing arsenal. So, consider adding this measure to your email hygiene routine to cut down on the hassles of dealing with spam traps regularly.

by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World