The single most important metric senders need to focus on is their spam complaint rate. If your complaint rates are high, it drastically reduces the chances of your mail landing in the inbox. Google made this a point of emphasis in their list of sender requirements released in late 2023.
As Google states in their Email Sender Guidelines ‘to help ensure messages are delivered as expected, senders should keep their spam rate below 0.1% and should prevent spam rates from ever reaching 0.3% or higher.‘ If you exceed 0.1%, you are likely to start seeing impacts to your inbox placement. If you exceed 0.3%, you are not eligible for mitigation. You will need to remain under 0.3% for 7 consecutive days before you are eligible for mitigation.
To help senders better understand their exact spam rate on a daily, weekly, monthly basis—Google released a new spam page that provides senders with their exact spam rate on that day compared to the recommended threshold (0.1%) and policy violation (0.3%).
First, you need to make sure you have Google Postmaster set up for your sending domain/ subdomain. Make your way to the new compliance dashboard and you’ll see an option ‘Spam’. This takes you directly to the new spam page where you will get the detailed chart above. Google also provides a a daily breakdown:
Your spam rate could be high for a number of reasons. Maybe you are sending out too much mail? Maybe you are sending to an audience that did not expect to receive your mail? There’s a myriad of reasons why this might be the case. Thankfully, Google does provide more details around troubleshooting spam rates in their help center.
Digging into the specifics around your spam rate and what is causing elevated rates is one of the many areas of expertise our Expert Services team helps customers with on a daily basis. If you’re finding your spam rate is approaching (or above) the threshold, a Deliverability Consultant will help diagnose the issue and create a plan for the best path forward.
