Knowledge Base

Spam traps are a hidden threat to email deliverability and sender reputation on both the customer’s end and ours.

In this article, you’ll learn what they are, why they matter for senders’ reputations, and what steps to take to avoid them when using Campaigns by Pipedrive.

What is a spam trap?

A spam trap is an email address specifically used by inbox providers and anti-spam services to identify bad sending practices.

These addresses look like real ones but aren’t tied to any actual person and don’t behave like regular recipients. They don’t open emails, click links, nor do they subscribe to or unsubscribe from mailing lists.

You won’t be able to detect spam traps in your contact lists, and list validation tools like ZeroBounce can only identify known or recycled traps, not all of them.

There are three types of spam traps:

• Pristine traps: Addresses that were never used by real people. They‘re placed online where only email harvesters are likely to find them. Hitting one is a strong sign of list scraping or poor acquisition practices.

• Recycled traps: Old email addresses that were once valid but have since been left unused and repurposed. Hitting one usually means your list hasn’t been properly maintained.

• Typo traps: Misspelled versions of common domains (like “gmial.com” instead of “gmail.com”). This might be unintentionally caused by users mistyping their real addresses, but having one in a mailing list shows that addresses weren‘t adequately verified by senders.

Why spam traps matter

Sending emails to spam traps can seriously harm your email performance and our shared sending infrastructure. Sometimes, this leads to providers blocking IP addresses that serve more than one user, which is why they‘re so important.

So one user’s malpractice might harm other Campaigns users as well. Common consequences include:

• Lower sender reputation for you and other Campaigns users

• More emails ending up in spam folders

• Blocklisting by inbox providers or anti-spam services

• Reduced email deliverability

• In serious cases, blocklisting of Pipedrive’s sending domain or IP address

What happens if your account hits spam traps?

We monitor spam trap activity to protect our sender reputation. The Alerts and Tips section of the Campaigns feature provides best practices to keep your sender reputation high and will alert you in case of any issues.

If we detect either low engagement rates or spam trap hits from your campaigns, you‘ll see the following notifications in the Alerts and tips section, and we’ll also send you an email to your inbox with a similar warning.

In case of repeated spam trap hits on your account, according to our terms of service, we reserve the right to:

• Place your account under an account review process

• Enforce double opt-in (DOI) for all your future contacts

• Temporarily suspend sending privileges

• Permanently disable the account if best practices continue to be ignored

What to do if you receive a spam trap alert

The following alert will be issued to accounts whenever a spam track is detected in their contact list, containing brief information on what to do to solve the issue:

How to avoid spam traps

To keep your email list healthy and free of spam traps, always follow these best practices:

• Use permission-based lists only: Only send to people who have clearly opted in. Don’t buy, rent or scrape contact lists.

• Use double opt-in: While not required for all users, enabling this improves list quality by confirming each subscriber’s intent to receive your email communications.

• Clean your list regularly: Remove inactive, bounced or invalid email addresses from time to time. Consider using reputable list cleaning services.

• Filter out inactive contacts: Avoid sending emails to contacts who haven’t opened or clicked any emails in the last three to six months and remove them from your list.

• Monitor your engagement: Low open or click rates may indicate that your list is outdated and needs maintenance.

• Follow our terms and recommendations: Our supplemental terms outline acceptable use and these rules protect both your sending reputation as a service user and ours as a service provider.