Save Your E-Mail Campaigns From Spam Traps

An e-mail marketer's nightmare is to watch a campaign disappear into junk folders or, worse, trigger ISP or blacklist blocking. This can happen when an e-mail list includes "spam traps." Spam traps are e-mail addresses that don’t belong to real recipients, and they are used by ISPs and blacklists to track and block e-mail spammers. Spam traps can be recycled defunct e-mail addresses or e-mail addresses that never existed (honeypots). So, how can you stop these traps from sneaking into your system and sending your e-mail promotion into a black hole? Basically, you need to be careful about the way e-mail addresses are collected and how long they stay in your database. A recent blog post by Silverpop, a digital marketing platform provider, gives some tips. First of all, never use purchased (as opposed to rented) e-mail lists. Next, you can reduce incoming traps, even maliciously added addresses, by sending a double opt-in mailing during sign-up that includes a link that says "this is not me." Be cautious about contest data and appended addresses. And regularly hygiene your e-mail database. Go beyond cleaning up opt-outs and bounces, and segment data into active and inactive addresses. Recipients who don’t click or open an e-mail after six months generally don’t become active again, and they file more abuse complaints and potentially become spam traps in future. Focus on sending to active addresses and put older, inactive addresses on a special reactivation messaging track to try to re-engage, Silverpop advises. For the full article, see http://www.silverpop.com/blog/-Spam-Traps-Here-There-Everywhere