Goonies Never Say Die when it comes to Spam Traps

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

You’ve heard us mention “spam trap emails” – but do you know what that is?

Spam trap emails can catch even the least spammy of emails. This is because these email addresses are utilized specifically to locate senders who are not closely monitoring their recipient lists.

The thought process behind is that, should one of these “fake” emails enter your recipient list, it would be less likely that you are maintaining your recipient list so well that every email on it is a valid & confirmed subscriber.

Sending emails too many of these “recipients” could lead to many blocks that can be detrimental to your domain reputation and overall deliverability.

So how do you know which emails are spam traps? You don’t. They can be previously active but now expired emails, random emails made by servers for this purpose, and really anything in between. The servers use this method to help protect their users from receiving spam content but it surely adds an extra obstacle to those sending mass emails.

At the very least, you are now aware of what we mean when we say “spam traps” & at the very most, you’ll do your best to keep your email list as healthy as humanly possible.

AND LUCKY FOR YOU… we have a few in-platform tools to help you do just that.

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind regarding your recipient list:

ALWAYS turn on validations when importing new lists, especially large lists that may contain emails you are not personally familiar with…

Be sure to review recipient engagement and behavior – this is made easy with our Automation feature. Creating an engagement series for recipients who have not recently engaged with emails allows us to unsubscribe expired or uninterested recipients and their emails.

Respect the wishes of those who would like to be unsubscribed from your list. This means including visible unsubscribe links in all of our emails & reviewing responses for those who may have intended to unsubscribe. This is not only a legal requirement but will benefit you in the long-run. Angry recipients generally yield more spam complaints…

For more information about spam traps and how you can be proactive about keeping your recipient lists healthy, be sure to contact our team for training or insight.

For more information, please visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

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By Julia, Deliverability Expert

Life: through the perspective of an email.

If you have sent a mass email through a marketing platform, you’ve probably wondered why the standards for “good” recipient engagement are so low.

That’s because there is a lot more involved in the life cycle of an email than just receiving and opening emails.

To get a better idea of the entire journey of an email, let’s review the phases of life your email goes through after you hit send…

First, we have the matter of deliverability. Domains and IPs that are blocked by a server will not deliver to that server, no matter the circumstances (referred to as hard blocks). It’s important to note that there can also be many temporary issues with deliverability (known as soft fails), that can randomly affect any email.

From there, we will encounter difficulties with inbox placement. Not every email will land in a recipient’s inbox; some will find their way into spam & promotional mailboxes, which are rarely checked by recipients.

Lastly, & seemingly most important, is the overall recipient engagement. This is, by far, the most broad phase of life as it is affected by so many factors. Should your email make it to the recipient’s inbox, there are countless elements that will determine whether or not & how the user engages with your email. For instance, your user may love your subject line & hate your content; they may hate your subject line so they never open to see your content, they may never check their inbox & didn’t even see your email, & numerous other scenarios that lead to more or less engagement in an email.

The majority of emails sent will actually never be seen by anyone & that’s just how the game of email marketing goes. BUT, for this reason, you should be proud to see a 15% open rate with a 2.5% click rate – those numbers are actually a lot better than you think!

For more resources, Nucleus users can visit the resource library! 

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Segments & the importance of ALWAYS being selective

Nucleus has been uniquely designed to help you gather data that will specifically help you to best manage your campaign & affiliated goals. By utilizing our tools and features properly, you will be able to reach your most valuable supporters in the most efficient manner.

With that in mind, I would like to take some time to review the usefulness in one of CN’s oldest & most useful features: Segments.

Our system compiles the data you have provided upon initial setup of your account & any additional information we have been able to collect, through recipient engagement patterns & landing page responses. From here, you have the decision as to whether or not you’d like to apply this information. This is where segments come into play…

Segments allow us to reach our desired demographic, location, and biggest supporters with ease.

Let’s discuss how…

If you are planning on hosting an event in a specific region, does it make sense to send invitations to residents who live hours away? Not really.

If you are holding a public speech for a candidate in New Jersey, would you ask residents of California to attend? Definitely not.

Our segment feature allows you to create an audience of one (or more) select state(s) & it even allows you to limit your audience range to a specific zip code or radius. See below for some examples:

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

In today’s blog, I would like to speak to the importance and value of collecting data from subscribers to improve overall recipient engagement.

The Campaign Nucleus platform offers many features that help you to collect and assign unique data to individual recipients & provides a variety of useful ways to utilize this information.

By locating specific details on recipients, you are able to:

1. Personalize emails to recipients
2. Effectively reach recipient interests

With regards to personalization, this data allows us to address the user in a more customized way to better grasp user attention.

In reference to utilizing specific interests, this data allows us to direct our emails to the most engaged audience possible.

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The easiest way to collect data from recipients is to combine the usage of Landing Pages & Amplify.

Landing Pages can be created to supply recipients with forms; the data pulled from these forms is then appended to each email profile. We utilize Amplify to send this landing page around in the most efficient manner to whichever recipient list we find appropriate.

Landing Pages offer many options that pull basic recipient information; this would be consistent with data along the lines of recipient name, age, gender, geographic location, and similar details.

In addition, by using our tagging feature in combination with our landing pages & emails, we are able to track specific user engagement and tag the content and interests that they are engaging most positively with.

For more information, please visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

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