The email deliverability testing tool to help know the enemy: what is a spambot?
As the title of the article already stated, we are interested in sign-ups this time, including the way spam email checker tricks and other ones improve b2b signing up. The latter is rarely an easy task, pride the marketer feels when having managed it is always well-earned. But do you really differentiate between a good sign-up and spam one? If not, then we advise to start with finding out what the spam sign-up is in the first place. You don’t want to know about the existing problems less than your spam email checker does, do you?
Briefly speaking, here is some key aspects on what the spam sign-up is:
-it’s a bot program used by Internet swindlers;
-such a bot has the following definite purpose: to provide a fake email address to a marketer’s sign-up forms in order to compromise his sender reputation;
-domains not equipped with protective means are bound to reveal spam sign-up based problems when checked with an email deliverability testing tool.
What causes incorrect sign-ups?
-Users’ making typos;
-Using one-time emails;
-Spammers’ intent to lay hands on one’s email address for which phishing e-letters are sent to the victim.
Email deliverability testing tool vs spambots hurting b2b campaigns
When being attacked by spam sign-up bots, no marketer can do without a reliable email deliverability testing tool. A tool to reveal problems should always be at hand. However, even knowing about the existence of spam sign-ups somewhere out there, one can carelessly think that they can’t make a serious impact on his campaigns. But that’s not true: they can and they do.
So, why is it crucial to run a test now and then? Email deliverability safety only? Not just that.
1) The things depending on sign-up details are email outreach, marketing effort success and definitely a marketer’s domain reputation. Fake info received in new sign-ups leads to your emails going into the recipients’ spam folders. How so? For instance, let’s imagine a marketer who got an email from some service he never heard of before. He furiously deletes it when what should have been done is to open the email and click “Unsubscribe”. The higher the bounce rate is on your side, the quicker you’ll get blocked by the ESP.
2) No accuracy for one’s email campaign metrics. The more of a marketer’s emails are complained about, the lower his open and click-through rates are. If the next email deliverability (spam) check reveals the ORs and CTRs to be too low, that may be the reason.
3) A possibility of breaches in your web security. Internet swindlers tend to leave their fraudulent addresses in order to lay hands on their victims’ ones. You click on a suspicious link and at this moment some sensitive data gets compromised.
Prepare the email deliverability testing tool for eradicating spam sign-ups: best tricks already here
We hope that now it’s obvious how important it is not to let spam sign-ups get near b2b businesses. Their activities can easily cause decreases in campaigns’ performance, low open and click-through rates, diminished sender reputation. To save users from that, Folderly – a product of b2b lead generation company Belkins – has rounded up the best ideas on how to protect oneself from spam sign-ups.
Is it possible to recognize a spam sign-up and reveal them whenever they send messages? Run a test, use spam filters but also make use of the following tricks. Thus, what’s necessary for every marketer is:
1) Using sign-up forms with the reCAPTCHA on. Definitely, the reCAPTCHA tends to annoy many users: the process of solving it takes time and slows down managing important tasks. Nevertheless, it’s better to enable the little “I’m not a robot” box than suffer the consequences of spambot attacks later.
2) Applying the double opt-in method for filtering fake subscribers. The methods used in order to improve one’s email deliverability are good for fighting spam sign-ups as well. Besides, this is a great way to get the attention of prospects genuinely interested in a marketer’s topic.
3) Throttling spam sign-up attempts. In brief, to throttle means to limit the number of emails allowed to receive within a certain period of time. Thus, when a spam bot starts sending messages to you, they will be blocked; just be careful not to throttle e-letters from genuine subscribers.
4) Honeypot fields. Those are invisible virtual boxes meant to lure spambots in. A bot automatically fills such a field in and gets trapped. Honeypot fields are great for maintaining the purity of every marketer’s email lists.
Identifying suspicious email addresses: can the email deliverability testing tool help with it?
Is there a way to test an email for being hazardous? Delivery rate (spam) check software is great but one has to keep his eyes open as well. We’d like to shed light on some signs indicating that submitting fake data is underway. Thus, you have to get suspicious if:
1) Your inbox contains emails from several subscriber addresses looking alike.
2) There take place simultaneous sign-ups for your other cold b2b emailing orientated services.
3) The sign-up form of yours gets filled in immediately. Only a machine can do it this fast.
4) The emails you receive come not from such ESPs like Gmail or Hotmail but some other domains instead. Normally a marketer’s emails have to resemble corporate addresses.
5) There are too many sign-ups at a time. That’s not the behaviour of normal B2B prospects or sales leads.
6) You receive emails from addresses on your or other blacklists. Whether the sender addresses have been blacklisted somewhere can be checked via specific services.
7) The emails a marketer receives are registered somewhere else other than the locations stated by the salesman’s prospects.
8) You start receiving emails from addresses containing random symbols.
Removing spambot sign-ups: the developers of the Folderly email deliverability testing tool recommend
Suppose you are a marketer who has received an email which is 100% not from a B2B prospect or sale lead of yours. Surely, the email should be deleted at once. But what about questionable addresses? Suppose, your checking software has revealed the presence of spambot sign-ups in the system but still something holds your finger ready to press “Delete”. What to do here?
We advise that questionable fake sign-ups be isolated in a suppression list. It may be helpful to review the suspicious addresses against such criteria as:
-specific words;
-sign-up source;
-subscription date etc.
Using a spam (email deliverability) checker (especially, such powerful as the Folderly’s one) will make the task much easier to cope with.