cfl
Multiple folks have reported via multiple forums today (May 22nd) that Yahoo’s ISP Feedback Loop (called the “Complaint Feedback Loop/CFL”) may not be working properly at the moment. People are reporting either no volume at all for the past few days or greatly reduced volume of spam complaint reports. I am reliably informed that Yahoo is aware of the issue and is working on fixing things. I’ll update this post when I have more information.
Hey, Al! My company has sent approximately 200,000 email messages in the past month to Yahoo! Mail recipients, but we haven’t received even a single complaint back via our ISP Feedback Loop. Is that normal?No, that is not normal! If you’re sending mail en masse, you’re going to get some non-zero number of complaints back. Even if it’s all fantastically opt-in and there’s no chance of somebody getting an unwanted email message, Yahoo’s ISP Feedback Loop, which they call the Complaint Feedback Loop, is always going to faithfully report along any complaints it is given, and that always will include a low number of complaints from people who truly did sign up for the email message. (Keeping in mind that a complaint isn’t what kills your deliverability dead; it’s a high number or high percentage of complaints that does it.)Thus, I suspect something is broken. Probably something on this checklist:You’re not
Yahoo (as far as Yahoo Mail is concerned) was once called Yahoo, then it absorbed AOL and became Oath, then Verizon Media, and now it is just called Yahoo again. Throughout this time there has been some form of ISP feedback loop — you know, that thing that sends complaint reports back to the sender or sender’s ESP platform when a Yahoo user clicks the “report spam” button. But the URL and process to sign up for the Yahoo CFL or FBL has changed over the years, and it’s easy to stumble across outdated guidance when Googling. So, here’s my try at providing updated guidance.A note on terminology: Yahoo calls this spam reporting process a CFL (Complaint Feedback Loop). I and most others call it an ISP (Internet Service Provider) FBL (Feedback Loop). I consider the terms CFL and FBL to be interchangeable in this context.What is it? The Yahoo…
