Titan Mail keeps a high delivery rate for all users by making sure the platform isn't used to send abusive or spammy emails. When someone marks an email as spam, Titan receives a report about it and takes action to protect everyone's sender reputation. This article explains what these reports are, why they matter, and what happens if your account receives too many of them.
What is a spam complaint report (ARF)?
ARF (Abuse Reporting Format) is a standard format that mailbox providers, like Gmail or Outlook, use to report spam. When a recipient marks one of your emails as spam, their mailbox provider can send Titan Mail a report in this format.
The report includes machine-readable details about the complaint, a plain-language description, and sometimes a copy of the email itself. Reading these reports can help you spot patterns in your sending, such as content or frequency issues, that are causing recipients to complain.
| alert-success | For a walkthrough of how to open and read these reports, see How to read the report.txt and report.csv file. |
Each report includes a Feedback-Type field that tells you what kind of complaint it is: Abuse, Fraud, Virus, Not-Spam (a message that was mistakenly marked as spam), or Other.
Why do emails get marked as spam?
Recipients interact with your emails in several ways: opening them, clicking links, deleting them, marking them as spam, filing a complaint, or adding you to a safe senders list. Each of these actions affects your deliverability, which is your ability to reach the inbox instead of the spam folder.
Positive engagement, like opens and clicks, signals to mailbox providers that your emails are wanted and helps more of them land in the inbox. Spam complaints have the opposite effect.
Most inboxes have a "Report Spam" or "This is Spam" button that recipients can click in one step. Recipients can also complain directly to their mailbox provider's postmaster or a spam-monitoring agency, which can affect your reputation more than an in-inbox spam marking would.
Why does Titan Mail care about spam complaints?
Titan Mail aims to keep deliverability high for every user on the platform, so it needs to prevent spam and abuse from happening in the first place.
Spam complaints damage your sender reputation, which affects how reliably your emails reach recipients' inboxes. If Titan Mail's servers generate too many complaints across users, anti-spam organizations and inbox providers may start treating Titan Mail as a source of spam. This can reduce deliverability for everyone on the platform, not just the account that received the complaints.
How to avoid getting marked as spam
A few habits help keep your complaint rate low:
- Focus on emails your recipients actually want to open and engage with.
- Only email people who have opted in to hear from you.
- Set up your domain's technical records (such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) correctly with your DNS provider.
Paying attention to these technical settings, avoiding spam trigger words in your subject lines and email bodies, and following up with recipients in a timely way all help protect your sender reputation, your IP address, and your domain from being blacklisted.
For a deeper look at improving deliverability, see Best Practices to Improve Email Deliverability.
What happens if you get too many complaints
| alert-warning | If your account or domain receives 5 spam complaints within a 30-day period, Titan Mail suspends it automatically. |
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Each time Titan Mail receives a spam complaint about your account, it sends you a notification email so you're aware of it as it happens. Keeping track of these notifications, and adjusting your sending habits when they arrive, is the best way to avoid reaching the suspension threshold.