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Spam Complaints: What They Are And How They Affect You

Robb_P
Employee

In my previous post, I discussed List Reviews and Account Reviews.  As a quick refresher, List Reviews come about only due to list size, whereas Account Review are due to a specific issue that Compliance would like to discuss with a customer.  One of those issue are elevated spam complaints.

 

What are spam complaints?

 

Most major email providers (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) provide a button that allows a user to report an email as spam to that provider.  This is usually at the top of the page and says something to the effect of “Mark as Spam”.

 

If an email sent through Constant Contact is marked as spam, it is reported back to us and is accounted for in the reporting for the campaign.

 

Why are spam complaints problematic?

 

Put simply:  The more spam reports that we receive, the harder it is for us to deliver our mail.  If mail providers see that Constant Contact mail generates high complaints, then they may decide to do any number of things.  This can range from limiting the amount of mail we can deliver to them at any one time or even outright blocking Constant Contact mail altogether.  As you can imagine, this has a major impact on everyone who uses our service.

 

There is a threshold we follow that dictates an “acceptable” amount of spam complaints, and that is just 0.10%.  That’s just one complaint per one thousand emails sent!

 

What can I do to avoid spam complaints?

 

It all begins with permission.  If the contacts on your list take an action to give you explicit permission (such as on a sign up sheet or an online opt in form), then you’ve already taken a big step in avoiding complaints.  Other factors such as sending frequency (don’t send too little, but not too much either), proper branding (make sure they know who sent them the email), and sending relevant information also play a part.

 

Still Have Questions?

 

We have resources in our Knowledge base to help you understand and reduce spam reports.  We also have an Account Review team who can answer any additional questions.

4 Comments
ShannonT237
Rookie

I am doing the marketing for my roommate who is a real estate agent. She has a data base she has compiled over the last several years. All of these people gave her an email. And have communicated with her that way before. My concern is that if I do an initial blast to all of them I may get more than 1 spam report in 5000 contacts? What happens if I get to many? I believe after the initial blast we will be good. 

Same with the bounced emails..will I be in trouble for having too many bounced emails? And what happens exactly.

Shannon

Tiago_R
Employee

Hello @ShannonT237,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us. I can definitely understand your concerns in regards to the reports that you will be receiving upon your first blast. Here is an article that can possibly answer some of your questions about Spam. In regards to your bounces, this is definitely something we recommend managing from day one. If you would like to understand a little more about how and what our bounce report is, click here for an article that will go over several things that will be very useful for understanding your bounces. If you would like to discuss account specifics, I'd suggest reaching out to our Account Review department directly as this may also contain account sensitive information. Click here for their hours of operation and best contact phone numbers. Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist with today. 

MyPatientLink
Rookie

Are people that have reported our emails as spam opted out of future emails?

William_A
Administrator

Hello @MyPatientLink ,

 

I apologize for the delay in our response, but it appears you're replying to a two-year old blog thread. If you have any other general questions, I'd recommend posting them on our Get Help page

 

Contacts that Report Spam through their email client should be generally be automatically unsubscribed. However some email clients don't automatically unsubscribe their users unless explicitly told to, in which case a contact that reports spam would also have to click the unsubscribe link in email sent through us. As this is something on the recipient's end, we have very little control over what their email client does and doesn't do.

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