Emails are one of the best ways to market your services. In a sense, these are the driving engine that allows businesses to get more sales organically without using any type of paid ads.
But what if these emails become an operational load for your business?
Customers and subscribers of your services are often not so forgiving and if you send them something that is against their taste, there are chances that they will mark you as spam. When this happens, Email Service Providers (ESPs) like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo will start putting your emails in the junk or spam folder. When more ESPs start sending your emails to the junk folder, then this will have an undesirable impact on your business.
What if there was a solution to this problem? What if senders can check who is sending their emails to spam so that they don’t send them too many sales emails?
That’s a tricky question. But the good news is that getting feedback on your emails is now very much possible.
Email Feedback Loops Explained
An email feedback loop (FBL) is a way through which email service providers (ESPs) inform senders about the impact of their emails on their subscribers. This gives the senders a chance to improve their emails by rectifying the mistake they made earlier.
ESPs help senders keep a clean list i.e. remove subscribers that can increase their email spam score. Moreover, senders can use feedback loops to evaluate their emails and re-think their email content and the sending frequency.
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Requirements for Email Feedback Loop
Here is a list of requirements for setting up email feedback loops so that you can get feedback from recipients.
- You need to have your own domain and server name. If you don’t have the domain on your name, get administrator rights of the website you host.
- You will need to have a DNS management access otherwise you will not be able to add some codes required by the ESPs.
- You need two email addresses on your domain including abuse@ and postmaster@.
Email feedback loops vary for each email service provider but the requirements are almost the same for all of them. Let’s learn how feedback loops work on Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.
Gmail Feedback Loops
Gmail has a special feature for those who have high email volume. The email feedback loop (FBL) offers senders relevant feedback that they would need to improve their emails further. However, Gmail won’t send complaints in the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF). It only sends the aggregated spam statistics in order to protect the user’s privacy.
It should be noted that the Gmail feedback loop is not provided to senders who have a low volume. To get the reports, users will first have to hit the required threshold for the email volume limit before they can get the emails. This is especially beneficial for large volume senders and ESPs.
Gmail only provides aggregated information and it cannot be used as a complaint removal tool.
Hotmail Email Feedback Loop
Here is how to apply the email feedback loop on Hotmail. First of all, register for your Microsoft account. Once that is done, go to the email feedback loop page and then fill out the form.
You will have to select the type of abuse format to receive complaints. There are three ways to get the abuse report.
- ARF
- Attachments
- Original messages
Next, select an authorization email address for each IP address of Hotmail (Outlook.com) feedback loop registration. That’s it. Once you are done with the setup, you will receive verification from Outlook. This will ensure that you have properly set up the email feedback loop on Hotmail.
Yahoo Email Feedback Loop
Similarly, you can also set up the feedback loop on Yahoo. The email loop allows Yahoo-based senders to easily optimize their spam issues without worry.
Setting up Yahoo email feedback loop is fairly easy. You just have to sign up for the Yahoo complaint feedback loop (CFL) and that’s it.
Please note that the users will have to sign up for DKIM email service. This will help Yahoo Mail determine the actual sender of the email.
Once that is done, you will have to fill out a new CFL application and get started. Yahoo will send you a verification email with @postmaster domain name.
The program is available only for bulk email senders. Yahoo will not report to senders who don’t meet the bulk email limit criteria.
Return Path Feedback Loops
There are many other ISP providers that offer feedback loop facility to the users. These ESPs use Return Path email feedback service. Here is a complete list of information about ISPs who have ESP feature available.
| Providers | Hosted By |
| AOL | |
| Bluetie (Excite) | Return path |
| Comcast | Return path |
| Cox | Return path |
| Earthlink | |
| Mail.ru | Return Path |
| Rackspace | Return path |
| Roadrunner | Return path |
| Synacor | Return path |
| Terra | Return path |
| Tucows | Return path |
| United Online | |
| USA.net | Return path |
| Yahoo | Return path |
| Zoho |
How Email Feedback Loop Decreases Spam?
Spam emails can have a huge impact on your sales efforts. The email feedback loop facility allows you to easily determine how about how many recipients disliked your message. These feedback loops were previously used by ISPs to monitor abuse from their networks, but now they are a great tool for senders to clean their email lists and generate even more sales through precise targeting.
How to use Email Feedback Loop Data?
Once you have the report from the email feedback loop available, you can use it effectively to improve your email routines.
Measure Email Effectiveness
The complaints you get from the emails can help you make optimized emails. These can yield more profit for your campaigns, and reduce the percentage of unsubscribes.
So be sure to review your messaging for inconsistencies. Measure email effectiveness by asking yourself, are you offering what you promised your users?
Listen to these recipients and make necessary adjustments.
Clean Your Email Lists
It is better to remove those people from the email lists who didn’t like your messages. If you are MailRush.io user, you can use the API to set up a rule to clean your email lists. This will ensure higher email delivery rates.
Check Unsubscribe Feature
Make email unsubscription easier for users. Most people only report you because they are not able to unsubscribe from your list. Maybe it is too hard for your users to unsubscribe from your email list. Make sure that the unsubscribe feature is visible to all the email recipients. If it is hard for them to locate the feature, there is a high chance of them reporting you as spam.
It is better if you also add a support feature so that users can easily get in touch with your support team. It will be better for your reputation if people remove themselves from your list instead of reporting you as a spammer.
MailRush.io automates mailing list maintenance by adding an unsubscription link at the bottom of your email template.
Review the Opt-in Process
At the same time, it is also important that you review your opt-in process. May be the subscribers are getting auto-subscribed to your email list. Add relevant permissions so that subscribers know that they were asked the necessary permissions properly.
That’s it.
We hope that you have clearly understood what email feedback loop is and how to add it to your email server for business success.