Spam complaints can happen even to the best of email marketers. There’s simply no escaping the fact that people can easily report you as a spammer even if you’re not.
People used to underestimate the rate of these complaints, but experts learned that many deliverability problems were directly associated with spam complaints. Although no marketer can achieve a 0% complaint rate, there are ways you can reduce and maintain an acceptable level of it, so you can continue sending emails to your contacts.
In this post, we’ll provide you with everything you need to know about spam complaints, why do we get them, what you can do to fix spam complaints, and how you can avoid being reported in the first place.
How Do Spam Complaints Work?
Many senders view drip email marketing campaigns as a one-way communication channel that has no real way of having a dialogue with the sender. Despite not being able to respond most of the time, senders have ways they can communicate based on their actions.
Opening emails, clicking on links, deleting messages, marking as spam, sending complaints, and whitelisting are all things that work as a form of communication for the recipients. All of these actions also affect your email deliverability.
The activity or engagement of each contact in your mailing list counts towards determining whether your messages will arrive at their inboxes or straight to their spam folders.
Fortunately, positive actions like opening an email, replying and forwarding, adding the sender to a whitelist, and moving messages from spam to the inbox are some ways that can improve your sender reputation with an email service provider. Such positive engagement lets mailbox platforms know that the emails you send are clean and that your recipients find value in your messages.
On the other hand, spam complaints will harm not only your reputation but especially your deliverability. It is more detrimental to your email marketing than simply having your emails ignored or deleted.
These spam complaints work like signals that recipients give out to email service providers letting them know that they aren’t interested in your emails. Mailbox providers are particularly strict when it comes to protecting their users from unwanted messages and consider spam complaints heavily when filtering.
Email service providers have a “report as spam” button that people can easily click to inform that a message is undesired. Once enough users mark your emails as spam or junk, these providers will start filtering your messages and send them directly to the spam folder.
As mentioned earlier, the opposite will happen once recipients start moving your emails from their spam or junk folders to their inboxes. This can help increase your deliverability and thus your inbox placement.
Besides reporting your email as spam from their inboxes, recipients can also complain in the following ways:
- They can inform a spam agency like SpamCop about your unwanted emails. Such an approach is often used by more savvy email subscribers which can have a significant impact that is worse than being marked as spam.
- Recipients can use the Microsoft Spam Fighters Program where they can vote on whether your messages are spam or not. Once enough votes have been tallied, your emails will be automatically routed to the junk folder for all Microsoft users.
As an email marketer, it’s prudent to consider your email marketing efforts as a two-way form of communication. Although your subscribers may not respond directly to your messages, they have several methods of communicating back even without your knowledge.
The way recipients communicate is a vital factor that will determine the success of your email campaigns. That’s why you need to make sure that your email communication remains positive and relevant so that you can avoid being reported as spam.
Why Do You Get Spam Complaints and How To Fix Them?
It can be surprising to learn that you are currently facing a high spam complaint rate despite being a legitimate email sender. It’s important to note that spam complaints can happen for many reasons and even good marketers who never send spam can be affected.
Let’s take a look at the main reasons why senders can get spam complaints and how you can fix them.
A Subscriber Believes They Didn’t Subscribe to Your Mailing List
Subscribers who think that they haven’t actually subscribed to your email marketing campaign are a fairly common reason to get a spam complaint, and they may be right. Typographical errors and inputting the wrong domains can lead to sending messages to the wrong addresses.
Once the true owners of the email addresses start getting unwanted emails, it’s only normal for them to complain. Another concern here is accidentally misspelling an address that turns out to be a spam trap, which can have serious consequences for you as a sender.
To fix this issue, you want to start checking your email list for typos and wrong addresses. Also, see if there are disposable email addresses and remove them from your list.
Finally, you should integrate a double opt-in process in your email campaign to minimize the chances of accidentally adding the wrong recipients.
A Subscriber Was Only Expecting To Get Emails from a Specific Address
An email recipient would likely file a spam complaint if they start getting messages from other email addresses or names other than the one they signed up for at the start.
This is quite common when there are several brands operating under a single company or the opt-in process implies that a subscriber can share their personal information with other partners.
To resolve this dilemma, you should clearly make a list of all brands that your subscribers can get emails from upon deciding to opt-in for your campaign. You should also provide checkboxes separate from your opt-in form and let recipients decide to receive messages from your partners that they themselves choose.
A Subscriber Doesn’t Recognize Your Email Address or Brand Name
The subject line and the “from” tag are the two things that people first see upon receiving an email. When you fail to do branding the right way, your subscribers can lose trust from you, which then leads to being reported for spam.
You can fix this by ensuring that your “from” line uses the same domain as the one you used on your subscription page. You should also make sure that you use this branding consistently throughout your email campaign.
Two other ways you can resolve this is by using a preheader to improve brand recognition and specific styling and designs that remain constant in your emails.
A Subscriber No Longer Remembers You
There are times when a company or brand changes its identity due to the merging of two entities or simply moving to a new email platform or domain.
When you send from a different email address or drastically change the way you design your emails, people may no longer recognize you nor your brand. This could easily result in a sudden increase in spam complaints particularly when you’re sending messages in bulk.
To fix this issue, you need to send your recipients a notification ahead of time regarding an upcoming change. You should request for them to add your new domain to their contacts list or whitelist.
You can also start introducing a major change to your brand in separate stages so that your subscribers have time to adjust.
A Subscriber Starts Receiving Shady Emails From You
Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for people they can take advantage of and attacking email marketers with large mailing lists can be a juicy target. Fraudsters that can access your email campaigns will often start sending shady emails to your lists.
Once your subscribers start catching up on these spoofing emails, they will no longer trust any message they receive from you moving forward.
What you can do to resolve this problem is to constantly monitor your emails and ensure that the design and content you put out reflect your brand. You should also keep track of any potential phishing or spoofing activity that might be going on behind your back.
A Subscriber Believes They Aren’t Getting the Content You Promised
Reports of spam can happen at any stage of the subscriber lifecycle for various reasons. One of these reasons is having mismatched expectations.
Delivering the content you promised right from the start is all well and good, but issues will start to happen when you don’t. For instance, your opt-in page states that your newsletter will contain upcoming promos and discounts, but you only sent your subscribers the latest updates about your company.
One way you can get yourself out of this mess is by explicitly stating what type of content your subscribers will get upon signing up. You should also include this in your privacy policy as much as possible.
If possible, you may also let your subscriber select what kind of emails they want to get from you during the opt-in stage. Providing a way for subscribers to change their preferences is also a good idea.
A Subscriber Is Unhappy With Your Sending Frequency
Believe it or not, changing even just the sending frequency of your emails can have a negative effect on your recipients.
How often are you sending emails to your subscribers? Are you staying consistent in terms of your regularity?
If you suddenly begin increasing your mailing frequency from just once a week to three times a week or more, subscribers aren’t going to like this and may file complaints. Users who are satisfied with your weekly emails may not welcome getting any more of them throughout the week.
What you can do to resolve this is to clearly inform your subscribers how often you plan to send messages to them. If possible, you can also add a way for recipients to change messaging frequency by placing a link next to your unsubscribe button in every email.
In case you have to be gone for quite some time, you can send a re-subscription email to your recipients once you decide to become active once again with your newsletter.
5 Tips on How To Avoid Spam Complaints
The following are some tips you can follow to avoid spam complaints:
1. Obtain Consent from Recipients Before Sending
You want to make sure that you’re as transparent as possible about including people on your mailing list before you send them emails.
Did the recipient agree to get brand messages from you upon signing up? Are they interested in learning about your new products and services?
Unless you answered yes to these questions, you should leave their email addresses out of your list.
2. Never Use Purchased Mailing Lists
Although it can be tempting to increase your email marketing numbers by using someone else’s list of contacts, doing so will only harm your sender reputation. This is especially true when recipients aren’t aware as to why they are getting emails from you in the first place.
What’s worse, they may even report you to the appropriate anti-spam agencies if they believe you obtained their information through illegitimate means.
Building your email list from scratch not only helps avoid spam complaints, but you also get more positive results in the long run.
3. Keep Your Active Subscribers Engaged
Continuing to send emails to users who are no longer actively opening and clicking your newsletters is counterproductive. It also has a negative impact on your sender reputation.
Instead, you should look to segment inactive users, put them in a separate list, and focus on your active user base instead. This should keep your recipients engaged while helping avoid the debilitating effect on email deliverability.
You can choose to retarget inactive subscribers later on by offering special discounts to bring them back in the fold.
4. Ensure Your Unsubscribe Link Is Displayed Clearly
Having a way for subscribers to opt out of getting any more emails from a campaign is a must nowadays. Taking away this option or simply making it difficult for people to find it can easily result in your recipients reporting your emails as spam.
That’s why you want to make sure that your unsubscribe links are easy to see in your messages so uninterested users can opt-out whenever they want.
5. Always Send Relevant Content
Lastly, you want to make sure that the content you send in your emails is always relevant to your audience. Customizing emails according to the interests of your subscribers is far more effective than deciding to cater to everyone.
Consider doing more research on specific subscriber lists so you can learn what their pain points are and how you can solve their problems for them.
Conclusion
Being an email marketer, you should keep in mind that spam complaints are a way for your recipients to let you know that your current email program has problems.
You should also keep in mind that your newsletters are a two-way form of communication. Your subscribers will always have different ways of communicating back even if you aren’t aware.
By following the tips and advice provided in this guide, you should be able to reduce your chances of receiving these complaints and maintain a solid email sending reputation.
