Sudden Spike in Spam Complaints. Should I Be Worried?
Hidey Ho,
My last three campaigns have been disastrous in terms of spam complaints. I offer mainly instructional newsletters with occasional calls to action after the instruction. Many of these just link to more free info so that people can improve their meditation practice. Some are "check out this book or paid course." Every subscriber opts in with a double opt-in process.
Late June: I had a JV promo with 35 self help authors. They all gave away well over a thousand dollars worth of videos, courses and such. Every time someone bought my book, they received the gifts from all of these people. These people all put the word out on their lists that this promo was happening. Tons of people sent me thank you emails. Many also subscribed to my list after I showed them how to do so. They would buy the book in any form, send me the order number, and I'd send them the link to all the free goodies.
After that, I decided to give all these same gifts to people on my list with no obligation to buy anything. I had a 56% (of all the people who opened) click rate for the landing page with the gifts. The open rate was 23%. The spam complaint rate was 0.2%. Unsubscribes were 1%.
Next email two weeks later: A newsletter with instructions on mindfulness-based holistic conflict resolution with no call to action. There were some links to the new Kobo version of my book and a classic cartoon on YouTube. 4% click rate, 22% open rate and 0.1% spam complaint rate. Unsubscribes: 0.1%.
Next email: I decided to warn gmail users that my newsletters (and those of other people, including blog updates) would end up in their "promotional" category and likely forgotten about. There were instructions on how to send my newsletters to the primary inbox as well as a warning to bloggers and others who rely on email updates. I tried to segment the list so that only gmail users would get it, but that wrongly turned up only 6 subscribers (figured out the REAL way to segment it after it sent but too late). Then, I just sent it to everyone figuring that non-gmail users would never open it anyway. Boy, was I wrong. 0.3% spam complaint rate in the first two hours (including a gmail user), then another gmail user unsubscribing citing "spam" as the reason (in the Mailchimp form). There were 0.7% unsubscribers and 0.3% spam complainers. Huge number of opens, the vast majority of which were not gmail users.
My reply-to address is a gmail account and I use mailchimp and 100% double opt-in. List has been active for three years. Historically, spam complaint average is well below the threshold, but the past month saw a huge spike. Some people open and click every time, and this is a pretty good percentage. Others might get newsletters, read them religiously, click on links and forget who I am. Then, when a strange email comes in, they forget it's me and complain (most unsubscribers in the latest one have been reading them religiously for up to a year).
Historically, open rate is 23% and click rate is more than 7%. However, number of emails and total recipients has been increasing the past few months, as I'm trying to go monthly rather than barely bimonthly.
Should I expect big penalties from various email clients soon and end up in a lot of spam folders because of this sudden complaint spike? I realize what factors lead to penalties, but I'm not sure how severe they are in each case. This is 0.2% spam complaints between three emails.
I know that email providers calculate engagement (clickthrough, opens, replies, etc) as well as complaints and unsubscribes. I'm just not sure how they weigh it all. I've had positives and negatives and not sure which ones will win.
My last three campaigns have been disastrous in terms of spam complaints. I offer mainly instructional newsletters with occasional calls to action after the instruction. Many of these just link to more free info so that people can improve their meditation practice. Some are "check out this book or paid course." Every subscriber opts in with a double opt-in process.
Late June: I had a JV promo with 35 self help authors. They all gave away well over a thousand dollars worth of videos, courses and such. Every time someone bought my book, they received the gifts from all of these people. These people all put the word out on their lists that this promo was happening. Tons of people sent me thank you emails. Many also subscribed to my list after I showed them how to do so. They would buy the book in any form, send me the order number, and I'd send them the link to all the free goodies.
After that, I decided to give all these same gifts to people on my list with no obligation to buy anything. I had a 56% (of all the people who opened) click rate for the landing page with the gifts. The open rate was 23%. The spam complaint rate was 0.2%. Unsubscribes were 1%.
Next email two weeks later: A newsletter with instructions on mindfulness-based holistic conflict resolution with no call to action. There were some links to the new Kobo version of my book and a classic cartoon on YouTube. 4% click rate, 22% open rate and 0.1% spam complaint rate. Unsubscribes: 0.1%.
Next email: I decided to warn gmail users that my newsletters (and those of other people, including blog updates) would end up in their "promotional" category and likely forgotten about. There were instructions on how to send my newsletters to the primary inbox as well as a warning to bloggers and others who rely on email updates. I tried to segment the list so that only gmail users would get it, but that wrongly turned up only 6 subscribers (figured out the REAL way to segment it after it sent but too late). Then, I just sent it to everyone figuring that non-gmail users would never open it anyway. Boy, was I wrong. 0.3% spam complaint rate in the first two hours (including a gmail user), then another gmail user unsubscribing citing "spam" as the reason (in the Mailchimp form). There were 0.7% unsubscribers and 0.3% spam complainers. Huge number of opens, the vast majority of which were not gmail users.
My reply-to address is a gmail account and I use mailchimp and 100% double opt-in. List has been active for three years. Historically, spam complaint average is well below the threshold, but the past month saw a huge spike. Some people open and click every time, and this is a pretty good percentage. Others might get newsletters, read them religiously, click on links and forget who I am. Then, when a strange email comes in, they forget it's me and complain (most unsubscribers in the latest one have been reading them religiously for up to a year).
Historically, open rate is 23% and click rate is more than 7%. However, number of emails and total recipients has been increasing the past few months, as I'm trying to go monthly rather than barely bimonthly.
Should I expect big penalties from various email clients soon and end up in a lot of spam folders because of this sudden complaint spike? I realize what factors lead to penalties, but I'm not sure how severe they are in each case. This is 0.2% spam complaints between three emails.
I know that email providers calculate engagement (clickthrough, opens, replies, etc) as well as complaints and unsubscribes. I'm just not sure how they weigh it all. I've had positives and negatives and not sure which ones will win.
.
.
~ Zig Ziglar