Spamtrap email address test to improve email deliverability is a tricky beast. Even if your brand is following email best practices (such as never purchasing lists or buying scraped email addresses) and you use double opt-in, many factors could keep your emails out of the inboxes of your target audience. The most common culprits are spam traps.

Spamtrap Email Address Test to Improve Email Deliverability

Spam traps are email addresses that ISPs and other antispam organizations use to identify, monitor, and block spammers. These addresses are either pristine, brand-new accounts that have been used to spam emailers or recycled, which means they were previously valid and active but have not responded to an email from anyone in a long time, thus becoming dormant and attracting spammers. Hitting a pure spam trap is a major negative signal to antispam authorities that your list-building practices are not in line with best practices while hitting a reclaimed spam trap may not have as dramatic of an impact but will still signal that you aren’t keeping your list clean.

As a marketer, it is your responsibility to maintain and regularly clean your email lists. This includes ensuring that your email addresses are legitimate, not purchased or scraped, and that people on your list have permitted you to contact them. Using email verification tools, monitoring engagement metrics (open and click rates), and removing inactive or hard bounce emails are all critical components of keeping your lists clean to avoid inadvertently sending to spam traps.