You work hard to garner email subscribers and send them relevant content that keeps your destination and DMO top of mind. A little dedicated maintenance on your part will help you keep those subscribers and stay out of SPAM folders. 

We turned to our resident expert, Veronica Williams, Senior Email Marketing Specialist here at Simpleview, for some tips about handling complaints and keeping email subscribers happy.

What are email complaints?
When people receive an email and feel that it is unwanted, "spam", or "junk" then they click on the ‘This is Spam' button in their email program. Traditionally, those emails are marked as unsubscribed.

What should I do about a complaint?
You should make sure that the recipients of your emails opted in to receive messages from you and you should have a clear way to opt out via an unsubscribe link in your newsletter. You will also want to take a look at your open rates and your click-through rates to see if they are low. If they are low, that's a sign that you should change your content to become more relevant to your subscribers so they don't treat you like spam.

Why am I seeing mostly Outlook/Hotmail and Yahoo! complaints?
It is normal to see most of the SPAM complaints in your reports coming from Yahoo! and Hotmail (or Outlook.com) because they are the world's largest email providers, and also the main providers using feedback loops.

Do I need to check my forms?
Yes, you will want to connect with your CRM Analyst and take a look through your forms to make sure they clearly state what the subscriber is signing up for and what they will get when they sign up. This is especially important to remain in compliance with Canada's new Anti-Spam Law (CASL).

What is an acceptable complaint report number?
Your goal should be zero. However, the industry standard for an acceptable percentage of complaints per email campaign is less than 0.02%.

Learn More: Read Seven Simple Steps to Avoid Email Blacklists