Spam complaint rate
Also called: Spam rate, Complaint rate
The spam complaint rate is the share of your delivered emails that recipients marked as spam.
How it affects cold email
Google asks all senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%, recommends staying below 0.1%, and says to avoid ever reaching 0.3% (Google). Yahoo also uses 0.3%, and calculates its rate only from mail delivered to the inbox (Yahoo).
With thresholds that low, a few complaints on a small campaign matter. The fixes are a relevant list, an honest subject and sender, and an unsubscribe that is easier than the spam button.
How Inboxed handles it
- Every campaign email includes a visible unsubscribe line and one-click unsubscribe headers. People who report spam through Inboxed’s report abuse page go on the suppression list, and those entries can’t be removed.
- Connect Google Postmaster Tools with your own Google account and Inboxed reads your Gmail spam rate daily.
Related terms
Sources
Sources checked on 8 November 2026. Rules change, so check the source before you rely on a detail.
- Email sender guidelines · Google, Gmail Help
- Sender Best Practices · Yahoo Sender Hub
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