3 min read
In this article we are going to explain catch-all email servers, why do they exist, why it is a problem for you and how you can find them in your mailing list and build a proper email strategy.
The catch-all email server is a widely used tool that allows an owner to receive all the emails sent to the domain. For example, if your email server domain is @example.com then all the letters sent to the email with this domain will reach your server. What does that mean? If someone sends an email to the [email protected] email which doesn’t exist the letter is still going to be received by your server as there is pointed out @example.com domain name.
There are mainly two reasons for catch-all email servers to exist:
It is all clear with the first reason, but what about the second one? Well, the thing is ESP companies create catch-all email servers and block all the senders that deliver letters to unexisting addresses. Just because these addresses do not really belong to any person and cannot be used to subscribe on newsletters, so in case someone has sent a letter to such an address he is definitely a spammer.
There are two types of catch-all mailboxes:
If you conduct email marketing campaigns, then any catch-all email domain in your base becomes a huge problem, even if it is not created by the ESP. Here is the list of reasons why you should solve the issues with catch-all emails:
There is no silver bullet to do this safely. All you can do when dealing with the catch-all domains is to get rid of the non-existing or non-actively used emails in your mailing list and build a strategy that decreases the risks of getting a spammer marker for your email domain.
There are several steps for you to take if you want to make sure your mailing list remains safe for your domain:
Actually, you do not really need to find such emails - your goal is to find emails that were created by ESPs to catch spammers and emails that are not really used. First of all, never use the mailing lists from the third parties you do not trust. In order to find the emails that harm your sender’s reputation you need to:
Catch-all email servers are the big problem for all of those who deal with email marketing. Even if you use only the whitehat methods you are not guaranteed from accidentally sending an email to the catch-all email server. However, there is no need to panic, just use the recommendations above to build the strategy and define broken emails and you are likely to avoid any issues with this problem.
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