Two of the most apparent indicators that may question an email marketer’s legitimacy are spam traps and spam complaints. These are just two of the main reasons why an email marketer’s sender reputation is in question if it’s legitimate or not and this will make emails not deliverable to the recipient’s inbox. Learn some simple steps on how to avoid these email deliverability issues.
Spam Traps – What They Can do to Your Email Marketing Pursuit?
What are spam traps? Spam traps are email addresses that recipients and ISP’s use to recognize spammers.
They are divided into two categories:
- They are new email addresses that have never been used by anyone. Since no one owned any of these accounts, there is no way that anyone could have signed-up or used any email program.
- They are email addresses that were once used and have been inactive for a long period of time. These inactive email addresses were recycled by ISP’s and assigned them as spam traps. Their reasoning is that if the original account users no longer check these email accounts that they no longer want to receive messages from you.
One thing to keep in mind when sending messages to spam traps is that IPS’s could permanently block your IP address. When this happens, the ISP’s will refuse to deliver your messages unless you remove those offending email addresses from your list.
Avoiding and Recovering Spam Traps
It is almost quite impossible for you to remove and get rid of those individual spam traps from your lists since ISP’s doesn’t make it known to the public which email addresses they were using as spam traps.
There is a way to identify if your mailing lists contain many spam traps. When you notice that the stats of your deliverability are slowing down and multiple blacklists start including your IP address.
One thing to avoid spam traps is to maintain a precise subscriber database and they are done in two ways:
- Setting up a double opt-in validation system – Always remember that a simple type like typing 0 instead of letter O can turn a valid email into a spam trap. Having a double opt-in confirmation process would prevent you from accidentally activating the spam trap after a user clicks a confirmation link from the email address in question.
- As for email marketers in order to maintain their good image when it comes to their sending reputation, Concentrating on improving your email list naturally is a must rather than obtaining data from list brokers. This doesn’t mean that all list brokers were involved in doubtful business practices. Though purchasing a bad list is one way of putting email marketer’s sender reputation at risk.
If you are in a spam-trap situation, you must take the initiative to re-engage your house file and re-opt in specific people who haven’t replied to your promotion in a while. Organizing your database based on current activity will help get rid of spam traps and it will make your communication with your customers to be smooth and it will go all the way as how you want things to happen. Reaching out to particular ISP’s and blacklist services to establish your legitimacy back.
Spam Complaints — Deliverability Mistakes That Leads to Serious Penalties
As for ISP’s, spam traps is more troublesome than spam complaints. When a user clicks the “Report as Spam” button, this is when spam complaints happen. This sends a message to the ISP’s that your message or campaign is unwanted.
It is understood by ISP’s that spam complaints are unavoidable. To some people, clicking the SPAM button is much easier than taking the time to read. Webmail providers such as GMAIL and AOL make it easier for their users to integrate spam from their important messages. These webmail providers give their users the convenience by allowing them to select their messages and repost their messages as spam with just a single click. This is much easier than opening each message and clicking the unsubscribe link in each email. Senders who received too many spam complaints will be penalized by ISP’s.
The volumes of emails you send were tracked by the ISP’s through their networks against the number of spam complaints you produce. If complaints continue to be an issue regarding your IP address, they will ban you from the inbox for up to 72 hours. If this continues to happen, you IP will be permanently blocked by the ISP’s.
Monitoring and Minimizing Spam Complaints
By participating the ISP’s feedback loop, you will know that a user reports your messages as spam. Feedback loops are designed as a communication mechanism where ISP’s tell email marketers which email recipients reported their emails as spam. To receive this data, you have to apply to each ISP first because ISP’s doesn’t disclose this information to anyone and everyone.
Monitoring your spam complaint rate should be done regularly to make sure that the spam complaint rate is low and the root cause of the problem will be identified before it could lead to serious penalties later.
If the spam complaint is rising, ask yourself these questions:
- Did you buy for yourself a list? Did you change your opt-in procedures or used an old list? This is an indicator that you have started sending to people messages who can no longer recall that they have signed up for your mailing list.
- Have you changed the content of your campaigns? Are you sending frequent messages to your subscribers or made drastic changes to your email program? If so, this is in indicator that your subscribers no longer find your content interesting and relevant to read.
Don’t be distracted by Spam Complaints and Spam Traps
The legitimacy of your email reputation is what makes your messages to be delivered to your recipient’s inbox. Keep your spam complaints rate low and avoid spam traps so you would be able to convince your subscribers that your email marketing campaigns should go to their inbox.
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