Google Feedback Loop (Spam Complaints)

A feedback loop (FBL) is a service that notifies senders when recipients mark their email as spam. Twilio SendGrid automatically suppresses any spam complaint address reported through traditional feedback loops. Some webmail providers, notably Gmail, don't provide a traditional feedback loop out of privacy concerns. Instead, they provide an anonymous, aggregate report directly to Twilio SendGrid about concerning senders.

This matters to you because senders with high spam complaints often see their mail broadly throttled or blocked during future email campaigns if the issue remains unresolved. Because Gmail's reporting is anonymous, you won't know specifically who flagged your mail as spam, and you likely won't know it's an issue until Twilio SendGrid reaches out to you.

If you receive a report about Google spam complaints, or even from traditional feedback loops, follow these best practices to resolve the issue:

1. If you don't have opt-in, don't send any more to those lists. It's against our Terms of Service, and considered to be spam anyway by the email community.
2. If your list is opt-in, track who's actually engaging with your email, as measured by click and open tracking. Many customers have this data in their own CRM, or you may prefer to use our own Click and Open Tracking apps, coupled with the Event Webhook to consume this data. For recipients who don't engage with your email, after a certain period of time that you determine to be appropriate based on your customer base and business model, stop sending to them. This tends to be a period between a few weeks and 3 months, depending on your sending frequency.

If you receive a report from us about spam complaints, use this as an opportunity to implement better list acquisition and maintenance.