Email Marketing: Understanding How Spam Affects Your Campaigns

Pristine spam traps are email addresses that ISPs or anti-spam groups artificially create in order to catch spammers. Emails sent to a pristine spam trap are usually part of purchased lists or have otherwise been obtained in an illegitimate manner. 

These are email addresses that were once in use but are now inactive. Emails sent to these addresses bounce back to sender for at least a year. ISPs may reactivate them to catch spammers, since sending to these addresses shows that a sender isn't cleaning their list.

An email address with a typo can be a spam trap. Sending to such addresses show that the sender doesn't clean their list or that some contacts didn't opt in (e.g. an address like "gmai.com" instead of "gmail.com.")

A good spam complaint percentage is 0.02%, which means one complaint for every 5,000 recipients.

If you know your audience and only send content to subscribers, you'll likely avoid spam complaints. Following email marketing best practices is the best way to prevent being marked as spam.

Here are some tips: 

Sending to a spam trap can result in penalties, such as your emails being sent to junk folders or restrictions on future campaigns.

Here are ways to avoid spam traps:

Tip: You can also use campaign statistics to locate and remove addresses that consistently bounce or remain unopened.  

Here are some tips to improve deliverability:

Learn more about improving your email deliverability.

No, using purchased email lists can lead to high spam complaints and harm your sender reputation. Always build your list organically with express consent from subscribers.

Tip: Test your email campaigns by sending them to yourself or a small group first to catch any issues before sending to your entire list.

If you encounter any Wix sites that you believe are sending electronic spam, you can file a complaint.