My email list got hit by a bot signup wave and I almost paid $89 for a cleanup tool

Uma Adams · 2026-10-12T01:25:03.731033+00:00

Last Tuesday I opened my Mailchimp dashboard and saw 4,200 new contacts showed up over a weekend, all from the same sketchy sweepstakes site. My open rates tanked because these fake emails were bouncing and dragging down my sender score. Before I panicked and paid for some cleanup app, I just exported the list and sorted by signup source, then deleted anything that came in after midnight from that one form. Took me 40 minutes with a free spreadsheet filter. Has anyone else dealt with a bot flood like this, and did it mess up your deliverability long term?

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My email list got hit by a bot signup wave and I almost paid $89 for a cleanup tool | Business Marketing - Free To Speak