Obsessed with Open Rates? Stop it; Focus on Feedback Loops

Marketers should obsess over e-mail feedback loops—reports some inbox providers and anti-spam entities offer on who’s complaining about a sender’s e-mail—the way they do open rates, according to Ben Chestnut, co-founder of e-mail service provider MailChimp.

Yet, few marketers pay nearly as much attention to feedback loops as they should, according to Chestnut, whose firm monitors them on behalf of clients and automatically removes e-mail addresses of people who report MailChimp’s client’s messages as spam.

“Some people totally ignore feedback loops, and then they’ll call us and say: “What happened? Our list has shrunk by 10%,” he said.

For one thing, monitoring feedback loops is crucial because if enough people complain about a mailer’s messages, it doesn’t matter how carefully opted in a sender’s list is, inbox providers will start blocking their e-mail as spam.

Conventional wisdom has it that a complaint rate of 0.5% or higher will result in major delivery issues. However, according to Chestnut, 0.5% isn’t necessarily a reliable statistic.

“I’ve seen less than that get blocked and I’ve seen a lot more than that get by. Either the formula’s constantly changing or there’s one guy out there changing the rules on a daily basis,” he said. “I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff get by and wondered: ‘Wow. How in god’s name did that not get blocked?’”

Chestnut recommends marketers strive for a complaint rate of less than one per thousand, or less than 0.1%.

A spike in complaint rates over messages to a permission-based list can indicate that the sender’s mail is surprising people, said Chestnut.

For example, changing the name in the “from” line from one mailing to the next can result in higher spam complaints, said Chestnut.

“One mistake people make is they set up a list, people sign up to it, and they create a sublist and give it a new title,” he said.

A marketer’s branding should be consistent from e-mail to e-mail and recipients should be able to look at it and instantly remember where they subscribed.

Spam complaints can also result from failing to set expectations correctly at signup, such as telling subscribers they’re signing up for useful news and then sending nothing but coupons and ads.

Ironically, complaints can also be a problem for e-mailers who send too infrequently or sporadically so recipients forget about them, according to Chestnut.

Getting e-mail addresses from non-permission-based sources also will result in spikes in complaint rates.

Bottom line: The marketer who ignores spam complaints does so at his or her own peril.

“You should always log in after every single campaign, and check your abuse complaint stats,” wrote Chestnut to customers in a blog post on the subject. “It’s sort of a ‘relevancy’ gauge from your own recipients, and you should react accordingly. If you send an email campaign, and you see more than a normal amount of abuse complaints, something’s wrong.”

Among the firms that offer feedback loops are AOL, Yahoo, United Online (Netzero Juno), The Network Abuse Clearing House at Abuse.net, Hotmail/MSN, Outblaze, Roadrunner and Spamcop.