Have you ever wondered how many spam emails are sent daily on the Internet? The number is big - around 150 billion emails globally.
For businesses, spam complaints aren’t just annoying but dangerous; they can damage your brand reputation, hamper email deliverability, and even lead to your emails being completely blocked and your email address being blacklisted. When email service providers flag your emails as spam, it becomes difficult for your business to reach its target audience, impacting your marketing efforts and leading to lost opportunities.
In this guide, you’ll learn about spam complaints, their consequences, and ways to prevent and handle them.
What is a spam complaint?
A spam complaint is when an email recipient reports an email as spam. This action indicates to the email service provider that the recipient found the email unwanted and intrusive. Too many spam complaints impact the sender’s reputation, lowering email deliverability by filtering out future emails to the spam folder.
If you send emails or run email marketing campaigns, you must be aware the effects of spam complaints. Here’s how spam complaints can affect you:
Damage sender reputation: Spam complaints harm your reputation, making it harder for your emails to reach inboxes.
Reduce email deliverability: Too many spam complaint rates can lead to your emails being filtered into spam folders or blocked.
Lower engagement: When your emails get filtered, few people see them, leading to lower open rates and engagement.
High spam complaint rates can flag your emails as spam permanently, reducing email deliverability conversions. Additionally, it may expose you to legal risks if you don’t comply with regulations.
However, it's important to understand why recipients might mark your emails as spam and file complaints.
Why do people file spam complaints?
People file spam complaints for different reasons, especially when they have bad experiences with the emails they’re receiving. Some of the main factors behind spam complaints are:
Unwanted emails: When people receive emails they did not subscribe to or remember subscribing to, they feel frustrated and are compelled to report such emails as spam.
Privacy concerns: Some individuals feel unwanted emails invade their privacy. Emails that aim to obtain personal information without consent are often considered risks by people and, therefore, reported as spam.
Security risks: When people come across suspicious emails, they perceive them as threats, leading them to report them to protect their email accounts.
Compliance issues: Recipients can report emails that don’t abide by regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act. This law requires senders to seek permission before sending emails and includes an option for unsubscribing.
How can we measure spam reports?
There are multiple ways of measuring spam reports. You can either use Google Postmaster or deliverability tools such as MX Toolbox, Messagebird's Inbox Tracker, BetterMail, and Constant Contact to measure spam reports.
These deliverability tools help email senders to ensure that emails reach the intended inboxes rather than being flagged as spam and landing the junk folder.
The image above shows Google Postmaster showing the spam complaint rate of a sender. We’ve covered more on Google Postmaster and improving email deliverability in the below guide.
How to reduce spam complaints
Reducing spam complaints is important for maintaining a positive sender reputation and ensuring high email deliverability. Here are some ways that you can use to reduce spam complaints for your emails.
1. Use opt-in and subscription confirmation processes
Always provide your email subscribers the option to opt-in to your email list by clicking a button or checking a box. It is recommended to use double opt-in where users need to confirm their subscription through a confirmation email, helping to confirm if they want to receive your emails.
2. Offer easy-to-find unsubscribe options
Include a clear unsubscribe link in your emails, making it easy for subscribers to opt-out. Once people unsubscribe, remove them from your list immediately.
3. Have a clean and engaged email list
Identify and remove all inactive subscribers who have not engaged with your emails since a while. Segment your email list to find invalid email adddreses and filter them to get a clean email list. You can also set up a sunset policy to do this.
4. A/B test your emails
A/B testing helps you to test different parts of an email. You can test subject lines, messages, or send times to find which works well for your audience and reduce the chances of your emails being marked as spam.
5. Monitor feedback loops
A feedback loop notifies senders when their emails are marked as spam or are complained about. By monitoring feedback loops, you can identify any problems with email content or sending practices, allowing you to take quick remedial actions to reduce spam complaints.
6. Email sender guidelines
Ensure you follow the latest email sender guidelines to improve email deliverability and prevent your emails from landing in spam. A few of these guidelines include authenticating your emails using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and ensuring compliance with RFC 5322, PTR records, and rDNS.
To know more about email sender guidelines, check the guide below.
People are still getting a ton of spam every day. Even if you have a great list and take really good care of that list, there's still a high likelihood that people will think it's spam. You have to make sure it's not spammy.
- Ann Young, CEO, Fix The Photo
How does Mailmodo handle spam complaints?
Mailmodo handles spam complaints to maintain the sender's reputation and ensure compliance with anti-spam regulations. Here’s how.
1. Google Postmaster integration
Google Postmaster is a free tool that allows email senders to monitor and improve email deliverability. Adding a TXT record to your DNS lets you get insights into your domain health, such as spam rate, authentication, domain reputation, and delivery errors.
This tool sends notifications about spam complaints when the spam-complaint rate increases by 0.3%. Keeping your spam complaint rate below 0.3% is important to maintaining a good sender reputation and improving email deliverability.
How to set up Google Postmaster for your domain?
Step 1: Log in to https://postmaster.google.com/
Step 2: Click the + option on the bottom right to create a new record.
Step 3: Include your domain in the Getting Started dialog box.
Step 4: Click Next to get the TXT record and copy the TXT record.
Step 5: Go to your DNS records and add the TXT record provided by Google. After, adding it, return to Google Postmaster and click Verify.
Once you finish adding the domain record, you will see the status as verified in the Postmaster tool.
2. Better targeting of content via segments
By sending relevant content to specific audience segments, you can reduce the chances of your emails being marked as spam. Segmenting email lists helps you to send personalized and relevant content that aligns with the subscriber’s interests and preferences. You can achieve this by categorizing people based on demographic and behavioral elements such as age, location, and past purchasing habits.
3. Add suppression list
A suppression list includes email addresses of people who have unsubscribed or marked your emails as spam. This list ensures you don’t send emails to these recipients, protecting your sender's reputation by targeting only those who want to receive your emails.
How to upload a suppression List in Mailmodo:
Step 1: Click on ‘Contacts’ present on the left sidebar. Next, click on the three dots in the top-right corner.
Step 2: Click on Import Suppression List in the drop-down list.
Step 3: In the dialog box, upload the CSV file. Enter the first column for email ID and the second for email type. If the email type field is left blank, the contact will be unsubscribed from all email types. The uploaded emails will be added to the unsubscribe list for specified email types.
Step 4: The dialogue box will show the list of email addresses you just uploaded. Click ‘Review upload.’
Step 5: Click Map columns and enter relevant data.
Step 6: Once you have mapped the columns, click on Review import and then select Import suppression list. The list of unsubscribed users will be successfully uploaded to Mailmodo.
Conclusion
Managing spam complaints helps maintain a healthy email reputation and ensures effective communication with your audience. If the spam complaint rates are high, it significantly impacts your sender reputation, leading to reduced deliverability and lost opportunities. Therefore, businesses must prioritize list hygiene, create relevant content, and abide by email regulations to reduce spam complaints. This will ultimately help to build strong relationships with the right recipients and improve the outcomes of your email marketing efforts.
