We all want a positive feedback about our email marketing campaigns, but we don’t always get it. What makes things worse is that, while waiting for a positive answer, we sometimes end up having to handle complaints and criticism against the emails that we send out. In other words, we have to face negative feedback and we want, above all, to find out who is not happy with our work, so that we can fine-tune our next campaigns.

Negative feedback is not necessarily something bad, since you can also interpret it as a signal. It flags out a problem that you can solve. It can start from any element of your campaign. the message is not relevant, it does not satisfy the interests of the subscriber or the recipient is not really a subscriber. Hence, this is just a small step to all those spam complaints that all marketers hate.

A responsible marketer will make it so that things get straightened out, and the first step that you ought to take – after every campaign – is to find out who exactly was not happy and put you on the spam lists. This is where the Feedback Loop comes in.

What is the Feedback Loop?

This is a tool that an ISP uses to let you know if someone complains against you. It is an essential tool for cleaning up a list, by deleting those who complained against you. And we all know what a clean list is about: a nearly 100% complete deliverability. We say “nearly”, because even when you do have a clean list, some messages never reach their destination inboxes, for a number of reasons. You will either continue to get spam complaints because some users use the spam button instead of the unsubscribe one when wanting to unsubscribe, or the ISP’s filters will keep your emails away because of a word, link, subject, etc. that they contain.

Here are some of the ISP’s that provide the Feedback Loop facility: AOL, Hotmail, UnitedOnline, Road Runner, Comcast, Yahoo!, Cox, RackSpace, but there are also other ISP’s that make it impossible to identify those who have reported you as spammer. What is most important about email marketing campaigns is to work with the ISP’s that let you know who complains against you.

How to use the Feedback Loop?

If you want to use the Feedback Loop, then you need to send a signup request to the ISP’s that you use, using an email address or getting registered through their online forms. But before you sign up, you’ve got to set the coordinates that you will enter into the form: the IP address for which you want to get the complaints, the list of domains that are of interest to you (correlated with that specific IP), a special address where all complaints you get should be sent, your data and the data of the company that you represent, the URL to the webpage that hosts the sign-up form. Once your request has been approved, you will start getting the notifications about the spam complaints and you will know who considered your message as spam. The next step is to delete that address off your contact list.

You will see how beneficial this service is, since you will notice a better deliverability later on. All these elements shall have a positive impact in terms of your reputation too, that will be “appreciated” and recognised by the ISP’s in your campaigns.

Why do you actually need the Feedback Loop?

What is the first thing that you’re interested in when you send your newsletter to an address list? The aim is to deliver them directly into your Inbox. But if, for certain reasons – of which the most important is the spam complaint – the newsletter doesn’t get into the right inbox, then you’ve got to do something to take control over your mail. Feedback Loop will help you find out who complains against your emails and – in this way – you will delete that recipient from your future delivery list, so that you don’t get other spam complaints and – what’s most important – so that the ISP’s don’t block your outgoing emails. Once you’ve got the spam complaints, don’t make the mistake to continue sending messages to the addresses that complained against you. All of these issues will impact your reputation quite badly and even your future campaigns may get blocked. We have already established that reputation is the important factor in how successful an email marketing campaign is.

That is why, we do recommend marketers to analyze carefully the deliverability report after every campaign they send out and to always consider the spam complaints.

How do emails get into the Feedback Loop?

You can sometimes be reported as a spammer even without doing anything special. More specifically, some of those who are unhappy with your message do not want necessarily to report you as a spammer, but do that because they don’t want to get out of their comfort zone. They actually want to unsubscribe, but they report you as a spammer, because they either don’t find the unsubscribe link or button, because this is either not visible or they forgot they subscribed to your newsletter or you send them irrelevant content or you mail them more often than they expect.

As a conclusion, recipients let you know via Feedback Loop that they no longer want to get your messages, so you’re supposed to delete them off your address list right after you get those notifications.

This is also an indirect indicator of how relevant your messages are. As I was saying, some recipients would have wanted to unsubscribe and to report you, whereas the unsubscription is the result of the dissatisfaction against your messages.

If you deal with some problems, you will definitely have good click rates, a good reputation in front of your ISP’s and – of course – the outcome you want.