Spam traps are used by mailbox providers to ensure senders are following email best practice guidelines. Mailbox providers use spam traps to help determine your sending reputation, so keeping spam traps to a minimum is important for the overall health of your email program.
To avoid spam traps, senders should follow best practices, which include:
- Sending your email only to consenting subscribers
- Maintaining good list hygiene
- Keeping a sound email infrastructure
- Maintaining secure systems and databases
Here are some suggestions for how to accomplish these objectives:
- Do not purchase, rent, or lease email addresses from third-parties.
- Do not use list harvesting techniques.
- Do not perform email appends.
- Reject subscription requests from malformed addresses, such as username@yahoooo.com.
- Reject subscription requests from role accounts such as: abuse@ postmaster@, sales@ and customerservice@.
- Use a confirmed opt-in or double opt-in permission method for all new subscribers.
- Use CAPTCHA during the subscription process to help prevent list poisoning.
- Have a process for:
- Handling hard and soft bounces
- Removing old and inactive subscribers
