What Are Abuse Emails – And 6 Simple Ways You Can Prevent Spam Complaints

Have you ever sent out a great email only to see that it got marked as spam? It can happen to anyone. Sometimes, people do it by mistake, but in most cases, they’ve done it before. In fact, they do it all the time.

According to Statista, in 2023, around 45.6% of all emails worldwide were identified as spam.

This statistic highlights the challenge email senders face, as abuse emails—addresses linked to frequent, often unwarranted spam complaints—worsen the issue.

Spam complaints taint your sender reputation and bring down your deliverability, so you can’t ignore them. That’s why addressing abuse emails is crucial for protecting your email campaigns.

Let’s see what abuse emails are, how they sabotage your email marketing efforts, and what you can do to avoid them.

Abuse emails are email addresses belonging to people who habitually mark incoming messages as spam. They’re known complainers who report issues with email content regardless of quality or intention.

Marking a message as spam serves a purpose. It provides recipients with a way to alert their email service provider (ESP) to:

• Phishing scams
• Emails containing viruses or malware
• Suspicious emails from unknown senders

However, some recipients will likely hit the spam button for many incoming emails. Reasons for this might include the following:

• You’ve purchased your email list, and the recipient has no idea who you are.
• They don’t remember signing up to receive your emails.
• People can mistake the “Mark as spam” button for the “Unsubscribe” button.
• Some feel like your campaign looks spammy.
• Your emails are sent too frequently, making the recipient feel overwhelmed.
• The recipient finds the content irrelevant or uninteresting to their needs.
• The email design or language mimics phishing attempts, triggering suspicion.
• The unsubscribe option is difficult to locate or not functional, leaving spam marking as the only perceived solution.

What is a high spam complaint rate?

The accepted spam complaint rate is 0.1%, which is one spam complaint for every 1,000 emails you send. When you exceed that rate, your emails can start landing in spam.

Are abuse emails on your list?

Our study of over ten billion email address validations shows that 1.59% are abuse emails (over 167 million addresses). The number of abuse emails on your list may prove higher if you buy or obtain leads from unreputable sources.

Abuse emails lead to spam complaints against your email domain.

While these may only seem mildly annoying, these complaints are detrimental to your email marketing efforts. Let’s closely examine what happens when abuse emails remain on your contact list.

Spam complaints impact sender reputation

Whenever someone marks your email messages as spam, it adds to your domain’s spam complaint rate.

Spam reports are a natural part of email marketing. Email service providers (ESP) allow for a 1% complaint rate. Anything higher than this looks suspicious and negatively affects your sender reputation.

Your sender reputation is a score out of one hundred that communicates your email behavior to inbox providers. Those with high reputations are trustworthy and will have an easier time reaching the inbox. Conversely, those with low reputations will struggle with deliverability.

Because abuse emails are likely to report spam, they harm your sender's reputation. Even if your content adheres to best sending practices, you risk needlessly increasing your spam complaint rate.

New messages are more likely to reach spam folders

Abuse emails make it harder to deliver messages to valid contacts. More spam complaints make you more likely to miss the inbox.

Receiving email servers will see your sender reputation and consider future emails from your domain as suspicious. There’s a strong chance your messages will hit a user’s spam folder even if you had no issue hitting the inbox in the past.

You will face account suspensions

When your domain has a low sender reputation, you will eventually face an account suspension from your ESP.

Every ESP has standards for its users regarding acceptable email-sending practices. As described above, most allow for no more than a 1% spam complaint rate. If you exceed this, they can suspend your account until you resolve the issue.

With a suspended account, you can no longer publish your email campaigns. You’ll need to utilize abuse email detectionⓘA validator’s ability to detect email accounts that misuse or abuse the spam report function. to locate risky emails and eliminate them from your list.

Your campaign metrics will be inaccurate

Abuse emails are lousy for accurately tracking campaign results.

Because these users are likely to report spam, they’re not significant indicators of email content quality. You may have a decent campaign, but poor clickthrough rates and spam reports make it look like you’re underperforming.

When analyzing a marketing venture, you want feedback from actual valid leads. Abusers will muddle your data and make it challenging to improve future emails.

There are a few measures you can take to keep a good sender reputation and land your emails in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Here are a few steps you can take and some good habits to follow.

#1. Avoid buying an email list

It’s the most prevalent reason for spam complaints. Recipients don’t know who you are and why you’re emailing them. Buying an email list may seem like a tempting shortcut, but it only sabotages your email results.

Also, never add people to your list without asking for consent. A powerful, engaged email list is one that everybody signs up for because they want to.

#2. Use an email checker

Keep up with your email list hygieneⓘThe act of or ability to maintain an email list or database consisting of valid and active email addresses. by running your contacts through an email validator. A quality email list verification system identifies abuse emails and removes them from your database before they report your emails as spam.

If you have a whole email list, it’s easier and faster to upload it on ZeroBounce.net and have it cleaned in bulk. But if you only need to validate an email address or two, you can always use our free email verifier.

The Workplace Depot exemplifies the impact of email validation. After adopting ZeroBounce, their bounce rates dropped from 4.6% to 0.4%, and spam complaints fell to less than 0.1%, significantly improving their email deliverabilityⓘA sender’s ability to reach the recipient’s inbox with their outgoing emails. It may also describe the ratio of emails delivered to the inbox vs. those sent to spam or blocked by the receiving server. and campaign performance.

Here’s how it works — you type in the email address in the field:

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In less than two seconds, the system returns a result. If the status says “abuse,” you know that emailing that address is risky because that person is likely to label your email as spam.

ZeroBounce validates email addresses instantly and lets you know if there is any issue.

#3. Make sure your campaigns look legitimate

The way your email comes across plays an important role in the number of spam complaints you get. A subject line that seems off-brand, with spammy words or too many emojis and links, may confuse your audience. It’s a good idea to keep your branding consistent across your templates so that people can easily recognize you.

#4. Use the double opt-in method to collect email addresses

Remember we said you should never buy an email list? Go a step further: add double opt-in to your sign-up forms.

This email subscription method requires new subscribers to click a confirmation link that goes out to them via an automatic email. By clicking that link, people confirm they have a genuine interest in your content and that they want to be on your mailing list. As a result, you’ll also see an increase in your engagement rates.

Email strategist Vicky Smith, a Mailchimp Pro partner, uses double opt-in to ensure that every person on her email list really wants to be there.

Of course, there might be some abuse emails among those new sign-ups. To weed them out, you could use an email verification APIⓘAn API, or application programming interface, that allows an email verification tool to connect and communicate with another software application..

The ZeroBounce real-time email verification API is easy to connect to all your sign-up forms and will reject abuse emails as they try to get on your list.

#5. Make the unsubscribe link visible and the process easy

Most businesses like to hold onto their email contacts. After all, growing an email list is no easy task. However, keeping people on your list against their will goes against your efforts to boost results.

If your sign-up process is easy, unsubscribing should be just as simple. Make sure all your templates have a visible unsubscribe link so that anyone can find their way out. Have the unsubscribe link at the bottom, along with the physical address of your business.

If opt-outs make you feel uncomfortable, read this article that shows you why unsubscribes are good for your email list.

#6. Maintain a constant sending rhythm

One thing both email subscribers and ISPs like is consistency. Being predictable supports your sender reputation. It shows that you don’t behave like a spammer who may send a high volume of emails followed by a period of inactivity.

So, once you determine how many emails you can commit to, stick to a schedule.

Not only will this keep your sending IP warm, but it will also prevent your subscribers from forgetting who you are and why they are getting your emails.