What to do with abuse reports sent directly to abuse@ address from Netzero & Juno?
Summary
What email marketers say8Marketer opinions
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that as a best practice, to immediately suppress recipients who submit abuse complaints from future mailings. This prevents further complaints and protects sender reputation.
Email marketer from Validity shares you should protect sender reputation by ensuring authentication is properly configured, using a dedicated IP address, and segmenting email lists to send targeted messages to engaged subscribers.
Email marketer from Mailjet shares to identify the source of the complaints by examining the IP addresses and sender information in the abuse reports, so that you can determine which campaigns or clients are generating the complaints.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that you should investigate the reports and see if there's a pattern, such as a specific campaign or client causing the issue. If the complaints are valid, suppress those recipients.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares to check that those contacts are well unsubscribed and/or accounted as spam complaints in your reports. As an ESP, they manage both the FBL and the abuse@ addresses for their customers, and they do sometimes receive those reports even though the FBL already did its job.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains the importance of setting up and monitoring feedback loops (FBLs) with ISPs like NetZero and Juno. FBLs automate the process of receiving and processing complaints, allowing senders to promptly remove complaining recipients from their lists.
Email marketer from StackOverflow explains that many ISPs provide a feedback loop where they will send you reports of users marking your mail as spam. You can then use these reports to automatically remove those users from your mailing list.
Email marketer from EmailToolTester recommends implementing double opt-in to ensure subscribers have explicitly consented to receive emails, reducing the likelihood of spam complaints.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains the importance of watching your sender reputation numbers - these numbers are an aggregation of the behaviour of your users. You should be proactively using this information to remove subscribers that are negatively impacting your sending reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks explains a list of actions to take. 1. suppress the recipients in those customer lists. 2. Track how many complaints per customer over time (ie, if a customer consistently gets complaints every day, there might be an issue). 3. Look at other data from the customer. What are the unsubscribes like? What are the bounces like? Is any recipient ISP rate limiting or giving you spam bounces for these customers? What’s the open rate? 4. Look at other FBL emails from other places and monitor the rates for changes
Expert from Spam Resource explains that abuse@ reports are generally handled by abuse desks at ISPs or mailbox providers. It's also important to set up feedback loops (FBLs) as these are the most effective way to manage complaints and maintain a good sending reputation. FBLs provide automated reports of spam complaints directly from the ISP.
Expert from Email Geeks shares to read the reports to see if there's more of an issue than background noise, or if there's someone at an ISP getting aggrieved with you.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that abuse reports that include the original message are useful because they show exactly what the recipient saw. Generic abuse reports without the message content are less helpful.
Expert from Email Geeks explains if it's just boilerplate then it's equivalent to an FBL report, and they can all be treated as Laura says.
What the documentation says6Technical articles
Documentation from SparkPost advises to regularly clean email lists to remove inactive users and invalid email addresses. Doing so reduces the number of abuse reports and improves deliverability.
Documentation from M3AAWG advises to implement robust list hygiene practices, including regularly removing inactive subscribers and validating email addresses to minimize the likelihood of sending to invalid or spam-trap addresses.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that their SmartScreen filter learns from user junk mail reporting to improve its accuracy and suggests that email senders should also pay attention to these reports to enhance their email practices.
Documentation from Google explains that you should maintain a low spam rate. They suggest that a spam rate above 0.10% might cause deliverability issues. Through Postmaster Tools, they advise you to actively monitor your spam rate.
Documentation from Spamhaus advises to investigate the abuse reports to determine the cause of the complaints. This includes checking if the reported emails violate their policies or if there are any issues with their sending practices.
Documentation from RFC Editor explains that the 'abuse' mailbox is a universally recognized address for reporting email abuse, such as spam or policy violations, making it a common target for ISPs and email providers to forward complaints.