One of the quickest ways to be blocked by ISPs is to have spam trap addresses in your email list. A spam trap address is an email address that is monitored for unsolicited email-- usually an email address that doesn’t belong to a real person anymore or was set up just for the purpose of catching spam. If no email has been registered to a specific address, anything that gets sent to it must be unwanted mail, or so the theory goes.

Important Blacklists to Watch:

• SBL
• XBL (CBL + Blitzed OPM)
• SpamCop
• NJABL
• DNSBL
• Various open proxy/relay sites

Spam trap addresses can find their way onto your file either maliciously (someone registers them to your list intentionally to mess with your email program) or accidentally (through typos). You can watch for this by monitoring your web form submissions for anything fishy, like many registrations from the same IP address in very quick order, and by using a confirmed opt-in process and list hygiene before adding names to your list.

Because spam trap addresses are secret, it is hard to find out what they are so you can remove them from your file. By monitoring spam-source data for your IP addresses through SNDS, Spam Cop and CBL, you can sometimes isolate spam trap issues on your file.

The best way to stop spam trap problems is to avoid them in the first place. You can also, though, re-permission your list to start fresh.

Spam trap addresses and other reputation factors can also be reasons that your IP addresses get put on one of the hundreds of blacklists out there. Blacklists are used by email receivers to automatically block email from certain senders. Several organizations like Spam Cop keep lists of IP addresses linked to suspected or known spammers, and make them public for ISPs and others to use in screening out spam. By trying to be a good mailer and watching your reputation, you can avoid blacklist inclusion.

Next: Pre-Campaign Testing