How can I improve my Spam Complaint Level (SCL) on Outlook?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that to reduce spam complaints, you should ensure subscribers have genuinely opted-in, make unsubscribing easy, segment your audience, and send relevant content to the correct recipients.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares to ensure your emails are mobile-responsive and provide a seamless viewing experience across different devices. Non-responsive emails can negatively impact user engagement and increase spam complaints.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor shares to regularly clean your email list by removing inactive subscribers and bounced email addresses. This improves engagement rates and keeps you off the spam list.
Email marketer from Reddit recommends always practicing permission-based marketing by getting explicit consent before sending emails. This shows recipients opted-in improving sender reputation.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that before sending, test your emails using tools to identify potential spam triggers in your content, subject lines, and code. Address these issues to lower your spam score.
Email marketer from Gmass explains to avoid using URL shorteners in your emails, as they are often flagged as suspicious by spam filters. Use the full, direct URL of the landing page instead.
Marketer from Email Geeks answers that the issue is with those who didn't confirm their opt-in, so the tip is to use confirmed opt-in.
Email marketer from Sendinblue explains that to improve your sender reputation, you must consistently send valuable content that your subscribers want, avoid using spam trigger words, and monitor your sending frequency to prevent overwhelming your audience.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that using a double opt-in process is a critical step to ensure only genuinely interested subscribers are added to your list, reducing the chances of spam complaints and improving overall deliverability.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains that FBL is feed back loop and JMR is junk mail reporting.
Expert from Spamresource.com explains that your sender reputation is a critical factor influencing your SCL. Maintaining a positive sender reputation involves sending wanted mail, and good list hygiene.
Expert from Email Geeks shares to keep your data clean by removing any FBLs that come in through the JMR program.
Expert from Email Geeks explains to only send to people who have actively opted in, making sure recipients don't mark your mail as spam because they don't want it.
Expert from Wordtothewise.com shares that implementing and monitoring complaint feedback loops (FBLs) helps understand which campaigns are generating complaints and allows for quick action to be taken to improve content and targeting.
Expert from Wordtothewise.com explains that gradually increasing your sending volume (IP warming) is important when using new IP addresses, to establish a positive sending reputation with ISPs and avoid being flagged as a spammer.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that implementing a DMARC policy and monitoring the reports, helps protect your domain from email spoofing and phishing attacks. This also helps improve your email authentication and sender reputation.
Documentation from Spamhaus explains that implementing best practices such as using confirmed opt-in, authenticating your emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and maintaining a clean mailing list can improve your sender reputation and reduce the likelihood of being marked as spam.
Documentation from RFC explains that DKIM provides a method for verifying the domain name associated with a message, which is cryptographically signed by the sending domain owner. This helps improve email authentication and reduces the likelihood of being marked as spam.
Documentation from Microsoft Support explains that understanding and configuring junk email filter settings in Outlook can help manage and improve SCL by allowing users to customize the level of protection and block unwanted senders.