I received mail from Mitusbishi UK over the weekend, telling me that as a subscriber I was eligible to buy a car from one of their dealers, or something. I didn’t actually read the whole thing. While I am competent in a right hand drive, even when it’s a manual, it’s not something I want to try over here in the US. The address the message came to is one that I’ve had for...
The DMA and EEC hosted a webinar today discussing spam traps. Overall, I thought it was pretty good and the information given out was valuable for marketers. My one big complaint is that they claimed there were only two kinds of spam traps, and then incorrectly defined one of those types. They split spam traps into “pristine” and “recycled.” Pristine traps were defined as...
Today’s question comes from Dave in yesterday’s comment section. I wonder if spammers might submit harvested addresses to big-name companies known to not use confirmed opt-in just to poison what they believe might be spamtraps? It’s certainly possible that people submit addresses to forms and big-name companies. But I don’t really think that poisons the spamtrap. Depending...
What is a spamtrap? According to a post I saw on Twitter: By definition, a spam trap is an email address maintained by an ISP or third party, which neither clicks nor opens emails, meaning it does not actively engage with the emails it receives. That’s not the definition of a spamtrap at all. A spam trap is an email address that does not belong to an actual person but still receives...
Often clients come to me looking for help “removing spamtraps from their list.” They approach me because they’ve found my blog posts, or because they’ve been recommended by their ISP or ESP or because they found my name on Spamhaus’ website. Generally, their first question is: can you tell us the spamtrap addresses on our lists so we can remove them? My answer is...
Spamtraps on a list are a symptom, not the disease itself. They’re (usually) a sign of some serious underlying problem, whether it be with address capture, bounce management, list purchase or epending. We’ve talked about this a lot in the past, but sometimes you need a short summary to refer someone to. Spamtrap Mythology A brief guide to spamtraps Spamtraps: should you care? Badly...
I believe that spamtraps – for the professional marketer – are scare tactics that are no longer relevant. a professional marketer I’ve talked about spamtraps in the past. I’ve described a number of different types of spamtraps and what they tell the trap maintainer about a sender’s practices. One thing I think the professional marketer above is missing is that...
“I thought spamtraps were addresses harvested off webpages.” “I thought spamtraps were addresses that were valid and now aren’t.” “I thought spamtraps were addresses created to catch spammers.” There is a lot of “I thought…” about spamtraps. Most of the theories are accurate but limited. Like the blind men and the elephant, they catch...
There is a lot of mythology surrounding spamtraps, what they are, what they mean, how they’re used and how they get on lists. Spamtraps are very simply unused addresses that receive spam. They come from a number of places, but the most common spamtraps can be classified in a few ways. Addresses that used to belong to someone and subsequently abandoned. This is where a lot of spamtraps at...
There comes a time in many marketers’ lives where they are faced with and old, stale database and a management chain that wants to mail those addresses. Smart marketers know that delivery problems will arise if they just reactivate all those users. They also know that mailing older addresses can affect current and engaged addresses as well. Still, many executives think there is no downside...
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