What about Tom?

I use tom@hotmail.com as my default bogus email address. Tom has subscribed to so many things because of me.

This is why address verification doesn’t work. The address tom@hotmail.com is a real address. It exists. It accepts mail. And at least one person admits to signing up Tom for mail that the person doesn’t want. I’m sure he’s not the only one.

<- 250 OK
-> MAIL FROM:<test@gmail.com>
<- 250 test@gmail.com....Sender OK
-> RCPT TO:<tom@hotmail.com>
<- 250 tom@hotmail.com
-> QUIT
<- 221 SNT004-MC1F46.hotmail.com Service closing transmission channel

Signups like this do contribute to deliverability problems in a number of ways.

  1. The address tom@hotmail.com may be a spam trap. Sending mail to too many spamtraps can result in mail going to the bulk folder.
  2. It may belong to an actual person. Sending mail to someone who has not asked for it can result in spam complaints and bulk foldering.
  3. It may be a canary address. This is one that gets a lot of spam. If mail goes to this address then it’s likely spam and similar mail is bulk foldered at other recipients.
  4. This may be a test address. It might be used by someone inside Hotmail as a test address.

A few of these fake signups aren’t going to hurt deliverability for most senders. Over time, however, these fake signups are going to accumulate on a list. As they accumulate they can, and do, start to affect deliverability. It you’re hitting a lot of these types of addresses it tells the ISP that you don’t have good subscription practices. The ISP knows you are sending mail to people who don’t want it and never asked for it. Filters are designed to affect mail sent to people who don’t want it and never asked for it.
These kinds of addresses are one reason delivery folks talk about segmenting mail based on engagement. Getting rid of even a few of them off a list can improve deliverability for an otherwise opt-in list.
Address verification doesn’t weed out these address. The test I did above is exactly what most of the verification services do. They’re going to return that tom@hotmail.com is a valid address and it’s going to end up in your list.
For those of you who are the type to put real addresses into signup forms, please don’t. It’s unfair to the people who own those addresses and it’s unfair to marketers. Use an address that you know doesn’t exist – like anything@example.com, .net or .org. These domains are reserved by ICANN and will never have users. Stop directing your unwanted email to an innocent 3rd party. They don’t deserve it, and neither do the senders you’re trying to avoid.

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Typo traps

People make all sorts of claims about typo traps. One claim that showed up recently was that Spamhaus has just started using typo traps. I asked my Facebook network when people started using typos to detect incoming spam.
Two different colleagues mentioned using typos, both on the left hand side and the right hand side, back in ’98 and ’99.
The point is, typo traps are absolutely nothing new. They are, in fact, as old as spam filtering itself. And as one of trap maintainers remind me, not all of them even look like typos. It’s not as simple as hotmial.com or gmial.com.
I really think that focusing on traps is paying attention to the wrong thing.
The traps are not the issue. The underlying issue is that people are signing up addresses that don’t belong to them. Sometimes those are addresses that are spamtraps. Sometimes those are simply addresses that belong to someone else. Those addresses don’t belong to customers, they belong to random people who may never have heard of the sender. Sending mail to those people is sending spam.
Just trying to remove traps from your address lists isn’t going to solve the underlying problem. Instead, focus on improving your data process to keep from sending mail to random strangers.

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Dear Email Address Occupant

There’s a great post over on CircleID from John Levine and his experience with a marketer sending mail to a spam trap.
Apparently, some time back in 2002 someone opted in an address that didn’t belong to them to a marketing database. It may have been a hard to read scribble that was misread when the data was scanned (or typed) into the database. It could be that the person didn’t actually know their email address. There are a lot of ways spamtraps can end up on lists that don’t involve malice on the part of the sender.
But I can’t help thinking that mailing an address for 10 years, where the person has never ever responded might be a sign that the address isn’t valid. Or that the recipient might not want what you’re selling or, is not actually a potential customer.
I wrote a few weeks back about the difference between delivery and marketing. That has sparked conversations, including one where I discovered there are a lot of marketers out there that loathe and despise delivery people. But it’s delivery people who understand that not every email address is a potential purchaser. Our job is to make sure that mail to non-existent “customers” doesn’t stop mail from actually getting to actual potential customers.
Email doesn’t have an equivalent of “occupant” or “resident.” Email marketers need to pay attention to their data quality and hygiene. In the snail mail world, that isn’t true. My parents still get marketing mail addressed to me, and I’ve not lived in that house for 20+ years. Sure, it’s possible an 18 year old interested in virginia slims might move into that house at some point, and maybe that 20 years of marketing will pay off. It only costs a few cents to keep that address on their list and the potential return is there.
In email, though, sending mail to addresses that don’t have a real recipient there has the potential to hurt delivery to all other recipients on your list. Is one or two bad addresses going to be the difference between blocked and inbox? No, but the more abandoned addresses and non-existent recipients on a list there are on a list, the more likely filters will decide the mail isn’t really important or wanted.
The cost of keeping that address, one that will never, ever convert on a list may mean losing access to the inbox of actual, real, converting customers.
 

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It's about the spam

Tell someone they have hit a spamtrap and they go through a typical reaction cycle.
Denial: I didn’t hit a trap! I only send opt-in mail. There must be some mistake. I’m a legitimate company, not a spammer!
Anger: What do you mean that I can’t send mail until I’ve fixed the problem? There is no problem! You can’t stop me from mailing. I’m following the law. My mail is important. I’ll sue.
Bargaining: What if I just send mail to some recipients? What if I hire an email hygiene company to remove traps from my list?
Acceptance: What can I do to make sure the people I’m mailing actually want to be on my list?
Overall, my problem with the focus on spamtraps (and complaints to a lesser extent) is that these metrics are proxies. Spamtraps are a way to objectively monitor incoming email. Mail sent to spamtraps is, demonstrably, sent without permission of the address owner. This doesn’t mean all mail from the same source is spam, but there is proof at least some of the mail is spam.
If there is enough bad mail on that list, then reworking the subscription process may be necessary to fix delivery.

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