spam complaints
As noted recently, Validity plans to start charging for ISP feedback loop complaint feeds. Free users will get some sort of aggregate dashboard that is perhaps similar to what one sees in Google Postmaster Tools, but it sounds as though there will be no individual complaints fed, and no opportunity to log or unsubscribe complaints or complainers.If some number of sending platforms decide not to pay this fee, and thus stop receiving spam complaint feeds, this is likely to have an impact on the email ecosystem. How much of an impact? To understand that, we should start by identifying the potential beneficiaries of ISP feedback loop complaints:The end user. In most cases, a “report spam” complaint results in that end subscriber getting unsubscribed from a particular sender. The mail stops. Now, the mail will not stop, perhaps allowing the user to report spam again and again, possibly causing more negative
A friend asked recently why they’re not receiving feedback loop complaint data back from Gmail subscribers. After all, she pointed out, Gmail does indeed have a Feedback Loop, does it not? What’s up with that?If you’re lucky, your sending platform is already configured to ingest and utilize data from ISP Feedback Loops (and most are). If that’s the case, you’re likely seeing complaints logged (and complainers unsubscribed) as a result of “this is spam” reports from various MBPs (mailbox providers) and ISPs (internet service providers). Yahoo, Microsoft and Comcast are perhaps the largest providers that offer these complaint feedback loops, and if you head over to Validity’s “Feedback Loop Service” website, you can see the whole list of 20+ ISPs and MBPs that participate in a Validity-managed “universal” feedback loop service. If you check that list on the Validity website, you’ll notice that there are three mailbox providers missing: Microsoft, Yahoo
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