How to Lower SPAM Complaints

Are Complaints Hurting Your Mail Delivery?

If you have a list of subscribers (you do, right?) then you know what it’s like to deal with false spam complaints. No matter how clean your traffic is, no matter if you use confirmed optin, no matter how careful you are…you WILL get SPAM complaints. It’s just part of life for the email marketer. The problem, of course, is that if your complaint rate climbs too high it can cause major problems including loss of your autoresponder account.

I suspect that most false SPAM complaints are caused by a number of things:

1. The subscriber legitimately thinks they did not sign up. (they’ve forgotten or don’t look at the mail closely)
2. The subscriber clicks on their mail service’s “SPAM” button rather than deleting.
3. The subscriber doesn’t like the content of the mail. Perhaps they want “payback”.
4. The subscriber doesn’t know how to unsubscribe.

I’ve tried a number of things over the years to keep my complaints low. Some worked a little; most did not. Adding the standard “subscription reminder” to the top of my messages did nothing- despite what autoresponder companies suggest.

Then I noticed a trick that certain marketers had been using. I have to give Robert Plank the most credit for this as I’m pretty sure he’s been doing it for years. He simply includes certain sign-up information at the bottom of each email. He lists the date joined, the sign-up IP address and the page where the list was joined. I figured this probably helped lower his SPAM complaints so I tried it…and mine were cut in half. Thanks, Robert!

I’ve been testing a few different pieces of data but it seems the most effective are the signup date and IP address. Just check with your autoresponder company to get the personalization code for these features.

I figure this works because it stops a number of problems I previously listed. It helps to remind the subscriber that they did signup. It also stops vindictive subscribers from hitting “SPAM” as some sort of payback for receiving content they didn’t like because now the message submitted is going to have their personal information in it. (thus making a false complaint less appealing)

Unfortunately, this doesn’t help customers who don’t know how to unsubscribe or who incorrectly click on “SPAM”. The latter is something that needs some serious tweaking from mail services. Huge red “SPAM” buttons in mail clients are not doing anyone any favors; some people use this as their “delete” button.

Try including the signup date and IP address in the footer of your emails and see if it lowers your complaints. It’s working for me.

Do you have any tricks for lowering false complaints?