Glossary
What is a spam complaint rate?
Spam complaint rate is the share of your delivered emails that recipients mark as spam. Google asks senders to keep the rate shown in Postmaster Tools below 0.30% and to aim for 0.10%. Yahoo also asks for under 0.3%. Cold email is more exposed than newsletters, because recipients did not ask for it.
Published by Sellinger AI. Numbers and settings checked on 24 October 2026 against the fact register. Report an error.
What do the numbers mean in practice?
0.10% is one complaint for every 1,000 messages delivered to the inbox. 0.30% is three for every 1,000. A cold campaign to 1,000 people that draws three spam complaints is already at Google's limit. That is why list quality and message relevance matter as much as authentication.
| Provider | What it says |
|---|---|
| Keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.30%; in its sending practices, stay below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching 0.30% | |
| Yahoo | Keep your spam rate below 0.3%, calculated on mail delivered to the inbox |
How do you see your rate?
Register your sending domain in Google Postmaster Tools, which shows the spam rate Google measures once you send enough mail to Gmail users. Your own tools cannot see a complaint directly, because the click happens in the recipient's mail app.
What keeps complaints low?
- Write only to people with a plain reason to hear from you.
- Make it easy to stop: an unsubscribe line, and a reply of stop honoured at once.
- Keep sequences short; complaints rise on later touches.
- Never disguise who you are or why you are writing.
How Sellinger handles it
When a contact replies with an opt out such as STOP or unsubscribe, in English, Bulgarian or German among other forms, the contact goes on the team's suppression list, the agent stops and the lead is closed out. A weak or unclear phrase never writes the permanent record: the agent stops and a person decides. Cold email can carry an unsubscribe line and the standard one click unsubscribe headers (List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post). It is a per mailbox setting.
Before every send on email, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, the platform checks the team's suppression list and refuses the send when the contact is on it or when the check cannot be completed. Sellinger does not show your Postmaster Tools rate; register the domain there yourself.
Common questions
Is 0.3% a target?
Does an unsubscribe count as a complaint?
Can I see who marked me as spam?
Sources and method
Google email sender guidelines and Yahoo Sender Hub, read 19 October 2026 for the linked blog post. Sellinger behaviour from the fact register, checked 24 October 2026.
Related: One click unsubscribe, Sender reputation, Suppression list, Google and Yahoo bulk sender rules.
