In email marketing, trust is crucial. As soon as your recipients start marking emails as spam, not only does your deliverability suffer, but your brand image can also be damaged in the long term. That’s why complaint management in marketing is one of the central tasks of any professional marketing strategy.
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What does “complaint rate” mean in email marketing?
The complaint rate (also “Spam Complaint Rate”) indicates how many of your recipients mark your emails as spam. This rate is given as a percentage and is a key indicator of the reputation of your sender domain.
The higher your complaint rate, the more likely it is that:
- your emails will end up in the spam folder,
- you will get on blacklists,
- your email tool will restrict or block you.
Why is monitoring the complaint rate so important?
If you regularly send mass emails – e.g. newsletters, campaigns or automation sequences – a low complaint rate is essential. It shows that your content is relevant, your target group has been cleanly segmented and you are maintaining a healthy recipient list.
Even small fluctuations can affect your overall deliverability.
How can you monitor the complaint rate?
Central monitoring tools are the Google Postmaster Tools.
With the Google Postmaster Tools you can:
- view the spam complaint rates of your Gmail recipients,
- monitor your domain reputation,
- identify technical sources of error (e.g. authentication problems),
- analyze trends over several weeks.
Google benchmark: The spam complaint rate should remain below 0.1%. For example, if you send 10,000 emails, no more than 10 recipients should report your message as spam.
Important to know: Even if you have recipients outside of Gmail, the figures from the Google Postmaster Tools are a valuable benchmark. Because other providers such as GMX, Outlook & Co. rarely disclose comparable data.
How can you actively avoid complaints?
It can never be 100% guaranteed that an email will not end up in spam or will not be marked as spam by the recipients. Nevertheless, the following important points should be observed in order to avoid complaint management in marketing as much as possible.
- Use double opt-in: Make sure that your recipients have explicitly agreed to receive your emails.
- Segmentation & relevance: Only send what is appropriate for the target group. Avoid irrelevant content or too high a sending frequency.
- Make the unsubscribe link clearly visible: A clear “Unsubscribe” button prevents annoyed recipients from reporting you as spam.
- Secure the technical basis: Aivie, for example, automatically ensures the correct setup of SPF, DKIM and DMARC – important prerequisites for delivery.
- Regular list maintenance: Remove inactive contacts. Fewer recipients, but interested ones, bring more success.
Read more exciting information about spam in email marketing here.
Conclusion: Complaint management is email marketing protection
A low complaint rate is a seal of approval for good marketing. Anyone who ignores complaints not only risks technical problems, but also actively damages the reputation of the company. Tools like the Google Postmaster Tools help you to keep track and take targeted countermeasures.
With Aivie, you have a marketing automation tool that not only focuses on segmentation and personalization, but also takes all technical precautions to ensure that your emails safely land in the inbox of your recipients.
Interested in a deliverability check of your emails?
Talk to us – we’ll help you take your complaint management in marketing to the next level.
