Role-based emails

Role-based email addresses (like admin@, help@, sales@) are addresses that are not associated with a particular person, but rather with a company, department or group.

These addresses are not intended for personal use as they typically include a distribution list of multiple recipients.

Why are role addresses an issue for marketers?

• Prime target for spammers: Easily “harvested” off the internet.
  • Senders with a high percentage of role accounts on their list(s) are at a higher risk of getting blocked for using a “harvested” or purchased list.
• Burden of proof: Typically, role accounts are sent to more than one person, making it very difficult to prove consent for each recipient
  • Explicit consent is required by law and our Anti-Spam Policy.
• It’s a trap: Role accounts are often used to blacklist senders that get caught sending to “honeypot” spam traps.
  • Blacklist providers like Spamhaus will treat any email sent to these addresses as spam by default because they say it was obtained and used without permission.
• Complaints: Sending to role accounts increases the risk of spam complaints and affects your Sender reputation.

What does CakeMail do about these types of email addresses?

We maintain a master suppression list of more than 400 common role-based addresses. While the full list is not made public, we can tell you it does get updated frequently to ensure our clients maintain a high level of email delivery.

Typical role-based email accounts include:

• sales@
• support@
• office@
• admin@
• abuse@
• postmaster@
• webmaster@
• billing@
• help@
• noc@

When someone attempts to send to a role-based email, these emails are automatically suppressed and do not get sent.