Are abuse reports and feedback loops (FBLs) still useful in email marketing, and how do they work with different email clients?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Reddit user u/EmailNoob states that FBLs are essential. They provide direct feedback from recipients who mark your emails as spam, which helps you clean your list and improve your sending reputation.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that FBLs help identify and remove subscribers who mark emails as spam, improving sender reputation and deliverability. They also help in understanding user behavior and refining email strategies.
Email marketer from SendGrid Blog states that FBLs significantly influence your sender reputation. Actively managing and responding to FBLs shows mailbox providers you care about your recipients' feedback, improving trust and deliverability over time.
Email marketer from Litmus Blog shares that consistently monitoring and managing FBLs allows senders to remove subscribers who mark messages as spam, avoid being blocklisted, and ensures your emails reach the inbox. High complaint rates can lead to serious deliverability issues.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor Blog shares that using FBLs in your cleaning strategy improves deliverability. FBLs are key when managing an email list effectively because you can avoid being marked as spam, and improve deliverability.
Email marketer from Email Hippo Blog shares that direct complaints are a spam button click which creates a FBL notification. Indirect complaints are when emails go straight to the junk folder, never opened and automatically deleted.
Email marketer from Gmass explains that the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is a standardized email format ISPs use to notify senders about reported email abuse. ARF reports help senders understand issues like spam complaints, list bombing, or other malicious activities.
Email marketer from SparkPost Blog states that FBLs are critical for maintaining good deliverability. By monitoring and acting on FBL reports, senders can identify and remove problematic subscribers, preventing future spam complaints and improving inbox placement.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow shares that FBLs are still crucial, even for transactional emails. They help identify if legitimate emails are mistakenly marked as spam, which might indicate issues with content or authentication. Monitoring FBL reports can prevent deliverability problems.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Spamresource explains that feedback loops let you know which recipients complained about your mail. By removing those recipients from your list, you prevent more complaints, protecting your reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the usefulness of FBLs depends on the desired outcome. Microsoft's JMRP can provide an early warning signal. FBLs don't cover 100% of a list and checking their B2C data, over 40% of email addresses are at domains with an FBL.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that there is no magic number regarding complaints. Going over 0.1% is a suggestion but this really depends on the size of your list, as you don't want to trigger the radar of ESPs and blocklists.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that FBL reports only come from users who click 'This is Spam' in webmail interfaces. Spam hits in IMAP clients like Apple Mail or Outlook do not trigger an FBL complaint, but trains the built-in Bayesian filters.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Validity explains FBLs are a service offered by mailbox providers (ISPs) that forward complaints about email messages back to the sender. This allows senders to remove users who flag emails as spam from their lists.
Documentation from Microsoft SNDS (Smart Network Data Services) provides feedback loop data to senders. It allows senders to monitor complaint rates and identify which IPs are generating the most spam complaints from Microsoft email users. Senders can use this to remove repeat offenders.
Documentation from RFC details that ARF (Abuse Reporting Format) is designed to provide a standardized format for reporting email abuse. It allows mailbox providers to send feedback to senders about specific messages that have been identified as spam.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that a high spam rate directly impacts deliverability to Gmail users. Using tools like FBLs helps to monitor and reduce spam rates by identifying and removing problematic recipients. Senders should aim for a spam rate below 0.10%.