Complaints
A complaint is a recipient reporting your message as spam, for example by clicking Report spam or Junk in their mailbox. Many mailbox providers tell the sender about these reports through a feedback loop (FBL). Mumara ONE is signed up to the feedback loops for you, receives the reports and matches each one to the message and the account it came from.
Analytics → Complaints shows those reports for everything you send, marketing and transactional. The page is titled Complaint Summary.
Only mailbox providers that run a feedback loop send individual complaints back, and some of the largest, including Gmail, don't. Your real complaint rate can therefore be higher than the one shown here. Treat every complaint you do see as a sample of many.
Choose the period
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Period list | Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days or Custom |
| Custom | Opens a calendar so you can choose your own start and end dates. Click Apply to load them. |
| Date range box | The exact start and end of the period, in your account's time zone. Read-only. |
| Refresh | Reloads the page for the same period |
The periods offered depend on your plan's log retention. See How long data is kept.
Complaint Rate
The large figure is your Complaint Rate for the period:
Complaint Rate = complaints ÷ messages received
The line next to it gives the counts, for example "3 complaint(s) received over the past 12,480 emails sent Today".
The Complaint Rate card on the Summary divides complaints by delivered messages, while this page divides by received messages. The two are usually close. Use either one consistently to follow your trend.
Complaints are counted on the day the mailbox provider reports them, which can be hours or days after the message was sent.
Complaints Stats
The Complaints Stats table lists each complaint in the period:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| From | The sender's name and email address of the message that was reported |
| Recipient Email | The recipient who complained. An information icon means Mumara ONE was unable to decode or locate the original recipient's address, because the mailbox provider removed it from its report. |
| Email Subject | The subject of the message that was reported |
| Sent Date | When the message was sent |
| Complaint Date | When the mailbox provider reported the complaint |
| Actions | An eye icon to view the message |
Use Previous and Next to page through, and the length menu to show more rows.
View the reported message
Click the eye icon (View Message) in the Actions column. The Email Message window shows the sender, the recipient (To) and the message as the mailbox provider sent it back. Click Close when you're done.
The copy comes from the provider's report, so some parts may be missing or blanked out. Providers often remove the recipient's address and sometimes the links.
Looking at the reported message tells you what people are complaining about: a particular campaign, a type of transactional email, or messages from one sending domain.
What happens to complaining contacts
Mumara ONE acts on every complaint for you:
- Marketing email. The contact is marked as having complained and is left out when your future campaigns are prepared, so they don't hear from you again. This protects your reputation: mailing someone who has already complained is the fastest way to more complaints.
- Transactional email. Transactional messages aren't tied to your contact lists, so nothing changes in your lists. If people complain about a transactional message, review whether it's really transactional, or whether the recipient should be able to turn it off.
Complaints weigh heavily on your sending reputation. Mumara ONE watches the complaint rates of your lists and your account, and if they rise above safe levels it can warn you, block a list or suspend sending for the whole account. See Bounces and Complaints and Sending Reputation.
Keep complaints low
- Send only to people who opted in, and make it clear in the From name and subject who you are.
- Make unsubscribing easy. A visible unsubscribe link, and the one-click unsubscribe header, give people an alternative to the spam button. See Sending Domains.
- Set expectations at sign-up about what you'll send and how often, then stick to it.
- Stop mailing people who never engage. Long-inactive contacts are the ones most likely to click Report spam.
See Compliance for the rules that apply to commercial email.
Common questions
Why can't I see who complained?
Some mailbox providers remove the recipient's address from their reports for privacy. Mumara ONE tries to recover it from tracking information in the message; when it can't, the information icon appears.
Why is there a complaint about a message I sent weeks ago?
Complaints are listed on the date they're reported, and some recipients report messages long after receiving them. The Sent Date column shows when the message went out.
Can I get complaints in my own system?
Yes. Set up a webhook to receive complaint events as they happen.
Related pages
- Bounces and Complaints: how complaints affect your deliverability
- Sending Reputation: how Mumara ONE protects your reputation
- Engagements: opens, clicks and complaints over time
- Delivery Logs: the delivery record of each message