> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Spam Complaint Rate, Dotdigital > ISP-complaint rate. Above 0.1% Gmail starts marking sender domain. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Email Marketing](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) > ISP-complaint rate. Above 0.1% Gmail starts marking sender domain. ## At a glance > The share of delivered emails that recipients flagged "this is spam" through their mail client. **The single most damaging deliverability metric**, because the receiving ISPs (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) feed it directly into their inbound-filtering decisions. Above 0.10% Dotdigital's compliance team will pause sending; above 0.30% Gmail starts routing your sends straight to the spam folder regardless of content quality. The healthy band is **under 0.05%** for established lists; under 0.10% during a re-engagement push. | | | | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **What it counts** | `numComplaints / numDelivered` per send, rolled up across the period. Numerator is the count of feedback-loop (FBL) complaints reported by ISPs back to Dotdigital's MTA. | | **Receiving ISPs covered** | Gmail (Postmaster Tools FBL), Yahoo, AOL, Outlook (Smart Network Data Services), Comcast, Cox, and the major UK and EU ISPs. **Apple iCloud Mail does not publish a feedback loop**, so iCloud "Mark as Junk" actions do not appear here. This is a real reporting gap and means the true complaint rate is structurally a touch higher than reported. | | **Definition of "complaint"** | A user-initiated "Mark as Spam" or "Report Junk" click. Auto-filtering by the mail client (Gmail's spam tab, Outlook's Focused inbox routing) does NOT count, only deliberate user action. | | **Reporting lag** | 6 to 24 hours typical. Some ISPs batch FBL reports daily, so today's complaint number for "today" is provisional. | | **Complaint vs unsubscribe** | A complaint is a hostile signal ("this email shouldn't have reached me"); an unsubscribe is a polite one ("I don't want this anymore"). Dotdigital's deliverability team treats 1 complaint as roughly equivalent to 25 unsubscribes for IP-reputation purposes. | | **Compliance threshold** | Dotdigital's internal threshold is **0.10% over a rolling 7-day window**. Crossing triggers an automated notification and may pause sending. Above 0.30% Gmail will spam-folder the sending domain at the inbox-placement layer. | | **What drives complaints** | (1) sending to a list the recipient doesn't remember signing up for, (2) too-frequent sending to the same contact, (3) a misleading subject line, (4) hard-to-find unsubscribe link (CAN-SPAM and PECR violation in UK and EU). | | **Auto-suppression** | Every complaint auto-suppresses the contact (they will not receive future sends from this account). This is required by ISP feedback-loop terms; you can see the action on [Suppressed Contacts](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/suppressed-contacts). | | **GDPR scope** | UK and EU recipients are particularly quick to mark as spam if consent isn't fresh; PECR enforcement is real, complaints to the ICO are rising YoY. | | **Time window** | `30D vsP` | | **Alert trigger** | `>0.1%`, drives a gauge\_inverse with `good <0.1%`, `warn 0.1 to 0.3%`, `bad >0.3%` | | **Roles** | owner, marketing, engineering | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Dotdigital data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example A UK B2C subscription-box brand running on Shopify with Dotdigital. Active list 86,000 contacts. The 30-day window covers 03 Apr 26 to 02 May 26. | Metric | Value | | ----------------------------------- | ------------- | | Total delivered sends | 412,000 | | Spam complaints | 188 | | **Spam complaint rate (this card)** | **0.046%** | | Same period unsubscribes | 1,480 (0.36%) | What's interesting: 1. **0.046% is healthy**, well inside the under-0.05% band for established UK B2C senders. The brand has been on Dotdigital for 3 years with consistent re-permissioning every 18 months. 2. **Complaints came overwhelmingly from one campaign**. A 24 Apr 26 win-back send to "Inactive 6m+" (12,400 contacts) generated 92 of the 188 complaints. That one campaign's complaint rate was 0.74%, more than 7x the warning threshold. The brand should not have sent it; the segment needed a re-permissioning email first. 3. **Unsubscribes were 8x complaints** at 1,480 vs 188. **This is the healthy ratio.** When complaints approach or exceed unsubscribes, the list is hostile (spam complaints rising, polite opt-outs falling) and sending should pause for a deliverability reset. The 8:1 ratio means most disengaged contacts are choosing the polite exit, which is what well-placed unsubscribe links produce. 4. **iCloud Mail blind spot**. Roughly 18% of the brand's UK list uses Apple Mail with `@icloud.com` or `@me.com` addresses. Apple does not publish FBL data, so the true rate is probably 0.055 to 0.060%; still healthy. For US-heavy lists this gap is smaller (Gmail dominates US consumer email). 5. **The Boxing Day 2025 send** (run with a previous CSV import that hadn't been re-permissioned) hit 0.31% complaint rate on a single day. The brand received the Dotdigital compliance email within 4 hours, paused the campaign mid-send, and ran a re-permissioning sweep before resuming. That experience is why the current 0.046% is sustained, the brand learned to pre-validate every win-back segment. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Spam Complaint Rate | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [Dotdigital Bounce Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/bounce-rate) | The other deliverability red-line. A spike in both at once means the list itself is the problem, usually a stale CSV upload. | | [Dotdigital Unsubscribe Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/unsubscribe-rate) | The polite-exit signal. Healthy ratio: unsubscribes are 5 to 10x complaints. When they invert, the list is hostile. | | [Sender Reputation alert](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/sender-reputation-risk) | The downstream effect. A sustained complaint rate above 0.10% degrades sender reputation with a 24 to 72h lag, which is what Sender Reputation tracks. | | [Dotdigital Suppressed Contacts](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/suppressed-contacts) | Every complaint is auto-suppressed. The cumulative count tells you whether complaint volume is structural or one-off. | | [Dotdigital Send Cadence](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/send-cadence) | The most common cause of rising complaints is sending too frequently to the same contacts. This card surfaces over-sending. | | [Dotdigital Open Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/email-open-rate) | A campaign with low opens AND high complaints is the classic "wrong audience" pattern, the segment didn't expect to hear from you. | | [Klaviyo Spam Complaint Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/klaviyo/spam-complaint-rate) | The closest cross-platform peer, same definition same threshold. | | [Mailchimp Spam Complaint Rate](/nerve-centre/mailchimp/mc_spam_rate) | Same definition, slightly stricter Mailchimp threshold (0.08% vs Dotdigital's 0.10%). | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Dotdigital:** [r1-app.dotdigital.com → Insights → Email Health → Complaints](https://r1-app.dotdigital.com/insights/email-health) for the rolling complaint view; [Account Settings → Email Sending Reputation](https://r1-app.dotdigital.com/account/email-sending-reputation) for the IP-pool view that drives compliance decisions; per-campaign forensic detail at *Campaigns → Reports → Detailed Statistics → Complaints*. The Postmaster-side view (Gmail's perspective on your sending domain) is at [postmaster.google.com](https://postmaster.google.com); add your sending domain and you'll see Gmail's view of your complaint rate, which can differ from Dotdigital's because Gmail uses a different denominator (delivered to inbox vs delivered to spam folder). **Why our number may legitimately differ from Dotdigital's dashboard:** | Reason | Direction of divergence | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | **FBL reporting lag**. ISPs batch complaints daily; some by 24h. Vortex IQ's "today" reads will lag Dotdigital's "today" by a similar window. | Vortex IQ slightly lower for the most recent day | | **iCloud reporting gap**. Apple does not publish a feedback loop. Both Vortex IQ and Dotdigital miss iCloud complaints; the figure understates the true rate by \~10 to 25% on iCloud-heavy UK lists. | Both equally understated; consistent gap | | **Time-zone**. Dotdigital reports run on account locale; Vortex IQ on UTC. Boundary days will differ. | ±0.005 to 0.02 percentage points at the boundary | | **Region pod**. Multi-pod accounts only count the connected pod. | Vortex IQ lower if other pods exist | | **Postmaster vs FBL**. Gmail Postmaster Tools uses a slightly different denominator (inbox-placed only); Dotdigital uses raw FBL count divided by `numDelivered`. The two will not match exactly. | Gmail Postmaster typically lower | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** Spam complaint rate is a definitional twin across email platforms. The metric is comparable but the *threshold* is platform-specific. | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | [`klaviyo.klv_spam_rate`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/klaviyo/spam-complaint-rate) | Same definition, comparable rate | Klaviyo's threshold is also 0.10%; ratios should match within 0.02 percentage points on the same list. | | [`mailchimp.mc_spam_rate`](/nerve-centre/mailchimp/mc_spam_rate) | Same shape, stricter Mailchimp threshold (0.08%) | Mailchimp throttles 0.02 percentage points earlier. | | [`brevo_sendinblue.bs_spam_rate`](/nerve-centre/brevo_sendinblue/bs_spam_rate) | Same definition | Brevo also UK and EU shaped, similar GDPR profile. | ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **Why is 0.10% the threshold? It looks like a tiny number.** At Dotdigital scale (and most ESPs) 0.10% means 1 complaint per 1,000 sends. Across a list sending 500,000 emails per month that's 500 complaints, which is roughly the volume that Gmail's spam-classifier needs to start de-prioritising the sender domain. The threshold isn't arbitrary; it's the level at which the ISP's machine-learning classifier flips its decision on inbox placement. At 0.30% Gmail will not just de-prioritise, it will actively spam-folder you regardless of content quality. **One bad campaign sent my rate to 0.20%. Will it recover?** Yes, gradually. The complaint rate is a 30-day rolling number on this card. A single bad campaign with 0.50% complaint rate will average out as more healthy sends accumulate. The repair takes 2 to 4 weeks of normal sending to bring the rolling rate back under 0.10%. **Don't try to "send through it"**, the right move is to pause promotional sending for 1 week, run only transactional and high-engagement-segment sends, then resume gradually. Sender Reputation tracks the recovery curve. **Why is my rate higher on Yahoo and Outlook than on Gmail?** Yahoo and Outlook users tend to be older, less email-literate, and more likely to "Mark as Spam" instead of unsubscribe. Gmail users tend to use the unsubscribe link. The pattern is structural and shows up across every ESP. Mitigation: make sure your unsubscribe link is large, obvious, and at the top of the email (not just the footer), and consider implementing list-unsubscribe headers (which Dotdigital adds automatically for accounts on shared IP pools). **My rate is 0.04% on Vortex IQ but 0.06% on Dotdigital's own dashboard. Why?** Almost certainly time-zone. Vortex IQ runs UTC by default; Dotdigital runs account locale. The 30-day windows differ by up to 24 hours at each end. A high-complaint campaign that fell on the boundary day will be in one window and not the other. The trend will reconcile after a few days. **What's "list-unsubscribe" and does Dotdigital handle it for me?** List-unsubscribe is an email header (`List-Unsubscribe-Post`, `List-Unsubscribe`) that lets the mail client display a one-click "Unsubscribe" button at the top of the message. Gmail and Apple Mail show this prominently. **Dotdigital adds these headers automatically for all sends on shared IP pools**; for dedicated-IP customers it's an account setting. The benefit is large: contacts who would have hit "Mark as Spam" instead hit one-click unsubscribe, which is a polite signal that doesn't damage sender reputation. **Is iCloud Mail's "Mark as Junk" actually invisible?** Yes, and this is widely under-appreciated. Apple's iCloud (covering @icloud.com, @me.com, @mac.com, and Apple's relay-anonymous addresses) does not publish a feedback loop. So when a UK list has 18 to 25% iCloud users, the true complaint rate is structurally a touch higher than what any ESP can report. The gap is consistent over time, so trends are still useful, but absolute numbers under-state. **Do unsubscribes count toward my complaint rate?** **No.** Unsubscribes are a separate metric ([Dotdigital Unsubscribe Rate](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/dotdigital/unsubscribe-rate)). They reduce your sendable list size but do not damage IP reputation. The ratio of unsubscribes to complaints is itself a useful signal: healthy is 5 to 10x more unsubscribes than complaints; at parity or worse, the list is hostile. **My account just received an automated compliance email from Dotdigital. What now?** Don't panic, this is the standard early-warning. The email will list: which campaigns spiked complaints, which ISPs are flagging, suggested remediation. Standard playbook: (1) pause all non-transactional sending for 24 to 72h, (2) run a list-cleaning sweep on segments older than 6 months, (3) re-permission inactive contacts via a dedicated re-permissioning email, (4) resume promotional sending at half the prior cadence and ramp back up over 2 weeks. **Should I move to a dedicated IP to fix this?** Probably not. A dedicated IP is useful for senders above 500k/month who want full control of reputation. For accounts under 500k/month, a dedicated IP often *hurts* deliverability because there isn't enough volume to maintain warm reputation; the shared pool's volume is what keeps you in the inbox. If your shared-pool reputation is bad, fix the list, don't move IPs. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Spam Complaint Rate* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Dotdigital and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.