Last month, we completed a spam trap expansion that significantly increased our visibility into traps of various forms worldwide, making Inbox Monster the largest spam trap network. We’re here to empower marketers with more inbox signals so they can make smarter decisions, and this is a major milestone with millions (we’re talking 100s of millions!) of traps now in the network.
Now that we’re seeing more spam trap data than ever before, some senders have experienced an increase in reported spam traps–and that can be a good thing. The more traps that we can see, the better equipped our senders are to identify potential areas of clean up.
Here’s a little 4-1-1 for users and potential users out there:
- The biggest changes can be seen in the recycled category. These emails were often legitimate addresses at one point that were converted to spam traps over a period of time after being abandoned or closed down by the user. These can also be “recycled” domains where all email accounts at a given domain become recycled.
- Recycled traps are now expanded a bit. Our “recycled” category also includes spam trap addresses that are located on parked domains, meaning the name itself is parked with a registrar service and is unavailable for use. Sending to parked domains doesn’t necessarily mean you are sending to trap addresses at major blocklists or ISPs, but it does point to sending and list segmentation practices that could need review.
- Empowering users to have great sending practices is always the name of the game. An increase in trap volume or type means there is room for cleaning up your mailable audience and lowering your overall deliverability risk.
We have more than a few ideas for getting started as a smarter sender. Check out our handy (and maybe even humorous) guide to different trap types for a primer.
