What is a spam complaint?
A spam complaint occurs when an email recipient marks a message as spam in their email client.
Recipients may flag emails as spam based on their personal judgment of the content, frequency, or relevance of the messages they receive:
Why do spam complaints matter?
Spam complaints are serious indicators of potential issues with your email marketing strategy.
Mailbox providers, like Google and Yahoo, closely monitor these complaints to determine your sender reputation, which directly affects your email deliverability. Spam complaints have an important role in reputation issues.
Common Causes of Spam Complaints
→ Message quality issues
Incorrect message classification (such as marking marketing emails as transactional, for onboarding messages for example).
Mixing promotional content into transactional emails.
Excessive email frequency for non-critical notifications.
Suspicious content (including aggressive promotions or misleading subject lines).
Unclear communication about email purpose and frequency.
Technical problems (broken images, non-functioning links).
Over-aggressive marketing (multiple daily emails with little value).
Repetitive content (constant promotional offers without variety).
→ Unsubscribe experience problems
Non-functioning unsubscribe links.
Absence of a global unsubscribe link.
Technical issues with unsubscribe functionality.
Poor unsubscribe link placement or visibility.
Difficult-to-find unsubscribe options in long emails, often clipped by Gmail.
→ Targeting problems
Emailing inactive subscribers who may have forgotten about your service and don't expect an email.
Inadequate audience segmentation across different subscription sources.
Failing to adjust content for different subscriber acquisition channels (e.g. targeting the same way users who subscribed to your newsletters and customers).
→ Userbase quality issues
Be sure your subscribers are aware that they subscribed to marketing communications, and know what they will receive and when. We recommend you implement a double opt-in logic to make sure your subscriber base is willing to receive your emails.
Above all, your opt-in process must comply with Batch guidelines.
How does Batch receive spam complaints?
As a sender, you are responsible for monitoring spam complaints across all your sending domains. A spam complaint rate exceeding 0.3% requires immediate investigation and corrective action.
Batch monitors spam complaints through:
Standard Feedback Loops (FBLs, see a list here)
Independent feedback systems like Signal Spam
💡 Note: Google does not provide specific email addresses associated with spam complaints, necessitating a proactive testing approach to identify and address potential issues.
Spam complaints management
When Batch receives a spam complaint, the system automatically:
Unsubscribes the complaining email address
Blocks future marketing communications to prevent additional complaints
Records the complaint for analysis and improvement
This immediate response helps maintain a healthy sender reputation and ensures compliance with email marketing best practices.
