Spam complaint rate

When a recipient clicks 'Report spam', the mailbox provider records a complaint. Spam complaint rate is complaints divided by delivered messages. Providers calculate it on their side: Yahoo, for example, says it calculates spam rate from mail delivered to the inbox.

A feedback loop (FBL) sends those complaints back to the sender, usually as reports in the Abuse Reporting Format (RFC 5965), so the sender can stop mailing the person who complained. RFC 6449 describes how complaint feedback loops are operated. Several providers run FBL programmes for registered senders, while Gmail shows an aggregate spam rate in Google Postmaster Tools instead of per-message reports.

Complaints are one of the strongest negative signals a sender can get. Google tells senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.1% and to avoid ever reaching 0.3% or higher; Yahoo asks senders to keep it below 0.3%. In cold outreach, complaints come from poor targeting, irrelevant messages, no easy way to opt out, and sending too often.

Skrap.ai doesn't process feedback loops. Complaints are mostly about relevance, so the useful steps are targeting the right people and honouring opt-outs. Search Leads lets you describe your ideal customer in plain English, the email finder returns verified work emails for the right person, and the team-wide do-not-contact list in Lists keeps people who opted out from being added again.