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What are spam complaints and how can I reduce them?
Through a direct feedback loop with major ISP's like AOL and Hotmail, the application can automatically detect if many of your recipients flag your campaign as spam.

How does an email campaign get marked as SPAM?

ISP's are increasingly adding spam reporting facilities that allow their customers to mark emails they don't remember opting in for as spam. For example, AOL features a "Report SPAM" button into their email software (pictured below). By clicking this button, AOL lets us know that one of our customers may be potentially sending spam.

What happens if my campaigns gets reported as SPAM?

When a recipient of your campaign clicks the "Report SPAM" button, 2 things happen:

  1. The recipient who made the spam complaint is immediately unsubscribed. This means you will no longer be able to send any campaigns to that individual.

  2. An email will also be sent to the contact for your account for each spam complaint received.

What is an acceptable spam report number?

Your goal should be zero. However, if your spam report number is less than 1 per 5,000 emails sent, then you are within today's industry norms. Industry norms will change over time and we will continue to keep you up-to-date.


How does this affect my account?

While discretion is used, ISP's still consider every spam complaint as an official complaint from their customers. This basically means that if enough recipients mark your campaign as spam, the ISP will punish the offending sender. This is done by either adding the sender to their blacklist or removing the senders' whitelist status.

This means that if enough of our customers get reported as spammers, we risk losing our important position on the whitelist of major ISP's. To ensure this does not occur, we will close your account if it receives a large number of spam complaints for any given campaign.


What can I do to avoid getting reported as a spammer?

You can minimize the chances of your campaigns being reported as SPAM by following best practice email marketing, including:

  • Using our double opt-in subscribe process to ensure a high quality subscriber list.

  • Informing the recipient why they are receiving this email and how you obtained their details in a clear location at the top of each email.

  • Including a single-click unsubscribe link in every campaign you send.

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