It's not about the spamtraps

I’ve talked about spamtraps in the past but they keep coming up in so many different discussions I have with people about delivery that I feel the need to write another blog post about them.
Spamtraps are …
… addresses that did not or could not sign up to receive mail from a sender.
… often mistakenly entered into signup forms (typos or people who don’t know their email addresses).
… often found on older lists.
… sometimes scraped off websites and sold by list brokers.
… sometimes caused by terrible bounce management.
… only a symptom …

… of a bigger problem with address collection.

Removing spamtraps …
… just means you’ve removed the spamtraps you know about.
… may mean you have a spamtrap free list …

… until you start adding new addresses to it.

… does not fix mail going to addresses belonging to other people.
… does not guarantee good delivery.
… ignores the underlying issues.
Why do people take spamtraps so seriously?
A lot of this is historical and some of it is to avoid arguments. Just about any sender, when told they’re sending mail to someone who didn’t ask for it will respond “But we only send opt-in mail! That person is wrong! They signed up!!” I’ve had this happen to me more times than I can count.
I’ve even had clients come to me in the past where I’ve been able to dig into my own mailbox to affiliate spam. This is always a fun conversation.
spammailboxMe: Here are a dozen examples of the mail your affiliates sent to me in the last month.
Client: All our affiliates send opt-in mail. They’ve assured us of this.
Me: This is an email address only ever published on a website / not used since 2001 to sign up for anything / untagged so it’s not something I would have given them.
Client: Our vendors say you’re wrong. Would you like to hop on a call with them so they can tell you when you opted in?
The calls have happened and vendors have argued with me about whether or not I opted in to receive stuff from them. It tends to end up them claiming I opted in to mail and me telling them I did not. Sometimes they tell me I just forgot – except all my actual opt ins are tagged addresses and have been since roughly 1999, so if you’re not mailing a tagged address, I never gave it to you. Sometimes they tell me I opted in to some company they purchased back in the late 90s and therefore they had permission to send to me.
The discussions are never productive. They are so fixated on their business story, that they will duck and weave and tell me I’m wrong about the spam they are sending me.
This is why people focus on spamtraps!
With spamtraps there isn’t the discussion of whether or not someone signed up. There’s no account owner, no one who has this address and could have signed up. Even in the case of recycled traps, the addresses generally bounced for a while telling senders there was no account owner there. Focusing on spamtraps on a list deflects the back and forth argument about whether or not the sender has permission to send mail they’re sending.
But spamtraps aren’t the problem!
In fact, I was just talking to one of the Spamhaus volunteers who told me “I hate the modern day focus on traps.” I agree. We focus on traps because it deflects and diffuses a lot of the arguments about whether or not someone opted in. But that means we don’t address a lot of real issues, either. If there are spamtraps on a list, then that list has problems. Focusing on removing the traps doesn’t resolve the problems, it just focuses on the traps. That tends to lead to a cleanup strategy that doesn’t do what the sender thinks it does.
Spamtraps are the symptom!
If there are spamtraps on a list, then there are also addresses that go to a person who never opt-in on that same list. Focusing on fixing the problems that led to the spamtraps getting on the list then cleaning off addresses that aren’t performing leads to better overall delivery and fewer problems. Focusing on getting rid of spamtraps may, but may not, fix a SBL listing. Maybe. But it’s my experience that fixing a SBL listing may only resolve a small fraction of delivery problems. Getting off the SBL by trying to address spamtraps, will not fix bulk foldering or temp fails are major webmail providers.
Focusing on improving overall list hygiene and really making sure that mail is wanted and expected by the recipients generally will resolve both the SBL listing and fix the other delivery problems that are happening because of poor data and poor list hygiene.
I’ve written about spamtraps before. 

 

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August 2015: The month in review

It’s been a busy blogging month and we’ve all written about challenges and best practices. I found myself advocating that any company that does email marketing really must have a well-defined delivery strategy. Email is such vital part of how most companies communicate with customers and potential customers, and the delivery landscape continues to increase in complexity (see my post on pattern matching for a more abstract look at how people tend to think about filters and getting to the inbox). Successful email marketers are proactive about delivery strategy and are able to respond quickly as issues arise. Stay tuned for more from us on this topic.
I also wrote up some deliverability advice for the DNC, which I think is valuable for anyone looking at how to maintain engagement with a list over time.  It’s also worth thinking about in the context of how to re-engage a list that may have been stagnant for a while. A comment on that post inspired a followup discussion about how delivery decisions get made, and whether an individual person in the process could impact something like an election through these delivery decisions. What do you think?
As we frequently point out, “best practices” in delivery evolve over time, and all too often, companies set up mail programs and never go back to check that things continue to run properly. We talked about how to check your tech, as well as what to monitor during and after a send. Josh wrote about utilizing all of your data across multiple mail streams, which is critical for understanding how you’re engaging with your recipients, as well as the importance of continuous testing to see what content and presentation strategies work best for those recipients.
Speaking of recipients, we wrote a bit about online identity and the implications of unverified email addresses in regards to the Ashley Madison hack and cautioned about false data and what might result from the release of that data.
Steve’s in-depth technical series for August was a two-part look at TXT records — what they are and how to use them — and he explains that the ways people use these, properly and improperly, can have a real impact on your sends.
In spam news, the self-proclaimed Spam King Sanford Wallace is still spamming, despite numerous judgments against him and his most recent guilty plea this month. For anyone else still confused about spam, the FTC answered some questions on the topic. It’s a good intro or refresher to share with colleagues. We also wrote about the impact of botnets on the inbox (TL;DR version: not much. The bulk of the problem for end users continues to be people making poor marketing decisions.) In other fraud news, we wrote about a significant spearphishing case and how DMARC may or may not help companies protect themselves.

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Data is the key to deliverability

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to the Sendgrid Customer Advisory Board about email and deliverability. As usually happens when I give talks, I learned a bunch of new things that I’m now integrating into my mental model of email.
One thing that bubbled up to take over a lot of my thought processes is how important data collection and data maintenance is to deliverability. In fact, I’m reaching the conclusion that the vast majority of deliverability problems stem from data issues. How data is collected, how data is managed, how data is maintained all impact how well email is delivered.
Collecting Data
There are many pathways used to collect data for email: online purchases, in-store purchases, signups on websites, registration cards, trade shows, fishbowl drops, purchases, co-reg… the list goes on and on. In today’s world there is a big push to make data collection as frictionless as possible. Making collection processes frictionless (or low friction) often means limiting data checking and correction. In email this can result in mail going to people who never signed up. Filters are actually really good at identifying mail streams going to the wrong people.
The end result of poor data collection processes is poor delivery.
There are lots of way to collect data that incorporates some level of data checking and verifying the customer’s identity. There are ways to do this without adding any friction, even. About 8 years ago I was working with a major retailer that was dealing with a SBL listing due to bad addresses in their store signup program. What they ended up implementing was tagged coupons emailed to the user. When the user went to the store to redeem the coupons, the email address was confirmed as associated with the account. We took what the customers were doing anyway, and turned it into a way to do closed loop confirmation of their email address.
Managing Data
Data management is a major challenge for lots of senders. Data gets pulled out of the database of record and then put into silos for different marketing efforts. If the data flow isn’t managed well, the different streams can have different bounce or activity data. In a worst case scenario, bad addressees like spamtraps, can be reactivated and lead to blocking.
This isn’t theoretical. Last year I worked with a major political group that was dealing with a SBL issue directly related to poor data management. Multiple databases were used to store data and there was no central database. Because of this, unsubscribed and inactivated addresses were reactivated. This included a set of data that was inactivated to deal with a previous SBL listing. Eventually, spamtraps were mailed again and they were blocked. Working with the client data team, we clarified and improved the data flow so that inactive addresses could not get accidentally or unknowingly reactivated.
Maintaining Data
A dozen years ago few companies needed to think about any data maintenance processes other than “it bounces and we remove it.” Most mailbox accounts were tied into dialup or broadband accounts. Accounts lasted until the user stopped paying and then mail started bouncing. Additionally, mailbox accounts often had small limits on how much data they could hold. My first ISP account was limited to 10MB, and that included anything I published on my website. I would archive mail monthly to keep mail from bouncing due to a full mailbox.
But that’s not how email works today. Many people have migrated to free webmail providers for email. This means they can create (and abandon) addresses at any time. Free webmail providers have their own rules for bouncing mail, but generally accounts last for months or even years after the user has stopped logging into them. With the advent of multi gigabyte storage limits, accounts almost never fill up.
These days, companies need to address what they’re going to do with data if there’s no interaction with the recipient in a certain time period. Otherwise, bad data just keeps accumulating and lowering deliverability.
Deliverability is all about the data. Good data collection and good data management and good data maintenance results in good email delivery. Doing the wrong thing with data leads to delivery problems.
 
 

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Data Cleansing part 2

In an effort to get a blog post out yesterday before yet another doctor’s appointment I did not do nearly enough research on the company I mentioned selling list cleansing data. As Al correctly pointed out in the comments they are currently listed on the SBL. And when I actually did the research I should have done it was clear this company has a long term history of sending unsolicited email.
Poor research and a quickly written blog post led to me endorsing a company that I absolutely shouldn’t have. And I do apologize for that.
With all that being said, Justin had a great question in the comments of yesterday’s post about data cleansing.

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