If any emails sent from your account receives an above average spam complaint rates then your account is likely to be closed temporarily or permanently. This will cause disaster to your reputation score which is highly difficult to build it from the scrape.

This article will help you how to deal with spam complaints. After reading this, you will know where you stand in terms of average sender in spam reports or worse.

Generally spam complaint occurs when a client clicks on the button "mark as spam". MailGoes has a set of factors to calculate sender reputation score. One of them is the spam complaint. When you know how to handle spam complaints and how to reduce the number then your reputation score will automatically gets adjusted.

Why a spam complaint occurs?

• High spam rates or complaint rates shows that the clients are no more interested with your campaigns.
• They might have forgotten subscribing for your email campaigns as you have delayed in sending your email campaigns, or they did not give their email addresses directly (single opt-in).
• They do not recognise your emails of what it is all about and why they want to receive your emails (relevance).

These are the general causes of why a spam complaint occurs? In general, according to the industry rules the spam complaints should be under 0.1%. When your complaint rates exceed this percentage then your email campaigns are eventually blocked by the ISPs routing all of your emails to the spam folders and your campaigns will be listed in the blacklist along with MailGoes IP address. Unlike ESPs, MailGoes manages the IP addresses that are used to send out your campaigns through different algorithms. We will make sure that all of our clients experiences high deliverability and high engagement rates. 

What are the reasons for a High complaint rate?

Sending campaigns to harvested lists:
Buying email lists from the third party concern or sending email campaigns to the rented or purchased email lists are the main source of high abuse and complaint rates. Such email lists are the resources of email addresses which are not given by the recipients themselves and hence they are not likely expecting your email campaigns. Naturally they will mark your emails as spam as it is found to be unsolicited email.

Hiding unsubscribes link or button:
Unsubscribe button or link is the simplest key in reducing spam complaints. Giving the option of unsubscribing from your future emails to recipients is less harmful than getting marked as spam. Unsubscribe link or button acts as the natural cleanser of your email list as it removes uninterested clients from your database.

Stale email addresses:
As we all know there is an expiry date for all things; likewise email addresses have a shorter life span of about 6 months, but it depends on particular ESP. Clients might change jobs, user names, forgot passwords, create new email address, delete email addresses and so on will make the email address to go invalid, does not exist or might go stale when they are least bothered to respond to your campaigns for about 6 months. As a result email addresses might go stale and invalid after 6 months and hence avoid sending emails to old and stale email lists.

Sending irrelevant content:
Email marketing revolves around the word relevance, especially when you are sending bulk or marketing or promotional emails; relevancy is the key factor to take into consideration. It is accepted that the average email user receives more than 6 emails in a day and if your emails resembles spam or does not interest them or does not relate to their specifications then you emails are at a risk of high complaint or spam rates.

Sending frequently:
Sending your email campaigns too often filling their inbox then your emails are at a risk of marking as spam. Send emails only as per user interest / settings like weekly, monthly or on new product arrivals and etc.

How to reduce spam complaint rates?

• Provide a prominent unsubscribe link or button at the bottom or at the top of the email in all emails campaigns. These feedbacks will prevent you to send emails to those who are not interested in your email campaigns. This gradually reduces your spam complaints.
• As a successful email marketer, you are aware of the CAN SPAM law where hiding or not providing prominent unsubscribe link or button is subjected to penalties. According to this law any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. The opt-out requests must be honoured within 10 working days.
• MailGoes is prominent in providing List-unsubscribe header option in all emails sent out through our channel which also includes a prominent and automatic unsubscribe tags. This List-unsubscribe header option makes it clear for the clients who are not interested or does not want to receive such emails in future or want to mark as spam can unsubscribe from our service without any charges and much difficulty.
• Relevance is the key word for success rates in email marketing. When you are not able to send relevant content to that of your client's interests, then you are wasting resources and time with email marketing. To carry out this in the best way, you can use A/B split test and stats comparison tools of MailGoes to target for higher engagement rates.
• Never send your email campaigns to rented or harvested or purchased lists. Building email database with confirmed or double opt-in process will yield more revenue and MailGoes strictly supports and advices to adopt this process. Double opt-in process makes sure that the email address is given by the recipients itself and is valid. This proves that the client is really interested to hear from you. Double opt-in process have a high engagement rates leading to more of opens, clicks and conversions, lesser bounce and complaint rates leading to good account and sender reputation score.
• Make use of prominent and truthful reply-to header email address, you or your team member should be able to access it and the address should match your content or to your business.