Benchmark Email Help Center

or chat with:

smart support, our Benchmark Email expert powered by AI

chat now

Knowledge Base Home aero-right Reports aero-right What is Abuse?

What is Abuse?

Reports Updated on October 14, 2021

One way to define abuse is as a “Spam Complaint.” There are different levels of complaints, each of which can affect your emailing reputation.

Standard Abuse Complaints are registered when a recipient marks your email as spam inside of their inbox. A report is sent to us whenever this happens, and we automatically unsubscribe the recipient and add them to your Master Unsubscribe List in your account to prevent any further emails from being sent to that recipient.

This complaint also covers any emails that are marked as “abusive” using the link in the footer of your emails that says “Report Abuse.”

Abuse complaints get counted towards your “Abuse Rate” which is the percentage of abuse complaints you receive compared to the number of emails you send. Our abuse threshold is 0.5 or 1 abuse complaint out of every 2,000 emails sent. If you see that your abuse rate exceeds this number, it may be wise to clean your list and take other actions to lower your chances of receiving further abuse complaints. Should the abuse complaint rate on your account become problematic, your account may be suspended or terminated depending on the severity of the issue.

ISP Abuse Complaints are registered when an email lands in a Spam-Trap. These traps are designed in such a way to catch any spammers who send emails to non-opt-in contacts. Hitting a spam trap usually results in blacklisting and is very serious. Per our terms of service, we require that all contacts are of an opt-in nature, and as such, hitting a spam-trap can result in account suspension or termination

Luckily, these traps are easily avoided by utilizing a confirmed opt-in signup form, keeping your list clean, by monitoring engagement rates, and campaign performance.

If you would like to know your abuse complaint rate, please feel free to contact our support team via email, LiveChat or by phone.