What is a spam trap and why do they matter?

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*Updated in September 2024

Quick points:

• Spamtraps are addresses owned by antispam organizations
• Emailing a spamtrap can result in your sending domain or IP to be blocklisted
• Maintain current, direct opt-in with an active lead database to avoid this
• Spamtraps are usually functional email addresses that can successfully receive a message. 

What is a spam trap or spamtrap?

A spam trap, or spamtrap is an email address secretly owned by an antispam organization that is used to detect spam. Antispam organizations do not sign up for mailing lists, so they consider any email sent to these addresses to be spam. Once an email is sent to the spamtrap, the antispam organization that owns this address can/will blocklist the IP and/or domain that sent the email.

Email administrators purchase subscriptions to the data offered by blocklist providers and may use the lists to block all incoming email from listed IPs or containing listed domains. From the marketer’s perspective, this can mean a high number of bounced emails leading to low lead engagement, and ultimately to weak revenue performance.

There are three types of spamtraps – pristine traps, typo, and repurposed/recycled traps. A pristine trap is an email address that was never used by a person. A repurposed trap is an email address that once belonged to someone but is no longer a valid address; these addresses will bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before an antispam organization will turn them into live traps. A typo trap will contain a misspelled domain.

How can a spamtrap get into my Marketo lead database?

Purchased data

Purchased data is unreliable and is high risk for your brand’s sender reputation.  The antispam community does not like the use of purchased data, so antispam administrators have made a concerted effort to get spamtrap addresses into the databases of data vendors. While data vendors may claim they provide opt-in data, you risk inadvertently purchasing spam trap addresses when using a data vendor.  A foundational strategy to maintaining healthy sender reputation is to gather email addresses directly from individuals alongside their consent to be enrolled in bulk email communication.

Sending unsolicited email is prohibited by the Adobe’s Acceptable Use Policy because this practice has a high risk of causing deliverability problems for your brand and the Adobe network.  To avoid spam traps, get direct opt-in before sending email.

If you have purchased data in the past, we recommend setting any inactive purchased leads to marketing suspended or simply removing them from your database.

Old data

Repurposed traps are email addresses that were once valid but are now owned by an antispam organization. This can happen when a company goes out of business; expired domains are often purchased by antispam organizations. Sometimes a company that has a direct partnership with an antispam organization will allow email addresses of former employees or users to become spamtraps.

Because antispam organizations will generally make sure future spam traps return a bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before they become spam traps you can prevent repurposed traps in your database by emailing remaining engaged with everyone in your database at least once every six months.

To safeguard your sender reputation, avoid reengagement campaigns to addresses you have not contacted in more than six months.

Unconfirmed form entries

People can unintentionally enter spamtrap addresses into forms either by mistyping their email or by intentionally using a fake email address that happens to be a spamtrap. If you use single opt-in, you risk adding spamtraps to your mailing list. This is more likely to happen if you are a B2C company or through the offer of gated content that requires an email address.

How can I identify spamtrap addresses?

Spamtrap addresses are considered trade secrets by the antispam organizations, and they are obscured by design. They do not share these addresses because their goal is for senders to change their mailing practices rather than to simply remove spamtraps from their mailing lists.

That said, one thing we do know about spamtraps is that they tend to be automated processes and do not engage. Spamtraps do not click links. You can use smart list filters to identify inactive leads in Marketo.

How can I prevent spamtraps in my database?

• Maintain active, direct opt-in for all leads
• Don’t purchase data
• Email engaged contacts least once every six months
• Don’t add old data directly to your mailing list
• Suppress perpetually disengaged contacts
• Grant access to assets such as free trials and whitepapers as email links to discourage intentional use of fake email addresses on forms
• Use scripting on your forms to identify potential typos