In this blog series I’ve been discussing how marketers can improve their Pay Per Click (PPC) ad spending by building the cost of email deliverability into their PPC analysis. We’ve looked at the cost of a bounce in detail - now let’s take a closer look at the cost of a complaint.

A complaint is what the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) call it every time a subscriber hits the “Report Spam” or “Junk” button. A well developed email system will alert a marketer whenever a subscriber complains through integration with the Feedback Loops (FBLs) that many ISPs offer. Complaints are one of the primary metrics that comprises a sender’s reputation score and, as we all know, reputation scores are what drive delivery decisions. Every complaint your email campaigns generate means a greater chance of delivery issues and the costs associated.

So why would PPC campaigns generate complaints? Well in PPC campaigns one goal is to capture leads – email addresses. Once those leads are captured and a marketer begins emailing them, some of those leads will hit that “Report Spam” button. When tracking and analyzing PPC campaigns, a lot of marketers find that some campaigns result in sets of leads that complain a lot more than sets of leads generated from other PPC campaigns. By comparing these results, marketers can focus their PPC ad spend on campaigns that don’t impact their deliverability and don’t hurt their business down the line.

Why do some PPC campaigns generate more complaints than others? And how do you build the cost of a complaint into PPC analysis? Those are the questions I’ll be looking at in my next couple of blog posts.

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