Your sender reputation with ISPs is the key factor which determines what will happen to your email after you click “Send”. Your reputation is built on your email sending activity, and it’s much easier to spoil it rather than restore your good name.many email marketers underestimate it, sender reputation is a big concern. A bad reputation is often the reason for the emails being filtered and not reaching the recipients.Let’s start from the factors that can hurt your reputation heavily if ignored.Spam complaints damage your sender reputation and force the ISP block your emails when 1) you generate too many spam complaints (a normal complaint rate is approximately 1-3 complaints per 1000 emails sent) and 2) you continue emailing to the recipients who complained after being notified about the complaint.
You know having an opt-in list is Bulk Sender not a miracle cure for not receiving spam complaints. And email marketers are often puzzled when an opt-in subscriber who deliberately signed up to receive their emails hits the “Report Spam” button. There are 4 simple reasons for this:
They don’t recognize the sender
If you don’t brand your From or Subject line and the recipients can’t clearly see who sent the email, they are mostly likely to treat your email as spam.
They don’t like the email content
If the information you send them doesn’t meet their expectations, some recipients can hit “This is spam” button upon your email.
They don’t like how often you email them
It’s all about frequency. If you email too much, they may not like it. And if you wait too long to email, they may forget about you.They don’t know how to unsubscribe. If you don’t provide an unsubscribe link in your email or your unsubscribe process doesn’t work, the recipients may send a spam complaint to stop receiving emails from you.Many ISPs provide a feedback loop service which is meant to notify the sender when someone complaints about his email. It’s beneficial for both the sender and the recipient.As I wrote above a normal spam complaint rate is roughly 1-3 spam reports per 1000 sent emails. But zero spam complaints over a long period of time should be an alert for you too. It can be the sign of two issues: 1) ISP stopped feedback loop service so you are not notified when someone complaints and 2) your emails are moved directly to the bulk email folder so your recipients may not even see them.That’s why it’s important that you monitor your delivery reports and act on spam complaints immediately.