Sending cold emails is one of the highest-risk forms of email communication. They’re often flagged when recipients feel misled, overwhelmed, or simply uninterested—and it takes fewer complaints than most teams think. Gmail and Yahoo now expect bulk senders to keep spam-complaint rates below 0.1% to stay out of the danger zone. If more than 1 in 1,000 emails you send gets reported as spam, you’ll be viewed as having a high complaint rate.
Each manual spam report feeds into mailbox filters, lowering your sender reputation and pushing future emails toward junk folders — sometimes across your entire domain. Adapting your cold-email strategy to minimize complaints is essential for a sustainable go-to-market motion and healthy, company-wide deliverability.
TL;DR: Cold email gets flagged as spam when targeting, frequency, or tone miss the mark. Even one spam report per 1,000 sends can trigger deliverability damage. Common causes include misleading subject lines, relentless cadences, or poor data hygiene. The most effective cold email strategies match targeting to clear business intent, personalize based on real triggers, and honor opt-outs with minimal friction. Complaints don’t just affect one sender — they can lower inbox placement across your entire domain. That’s why prevention beats recovery: suppress risky contacts, track complaint signals, and prioritize safe sending behaviors. Allegrow helps enforce those safeguards directly inside your SEP.
What separates cold email from spam?
Cold email is targeted, permission-conscious outreach to a specific person; spam is indiscriminate, deceptive, or non-compliant. This distinction matters because filters weigh how you send as much as what you say, which affects both reputation and inbox placement. In practice, these are the main differences:
- Intent: Cold email has a clear business reason and offers useful context; spam chases volume and leans on bait or false urgency.
- Personalization: Cold outreach references something real (company, role, or trigger); spam is generic or uses broken/missing merge fields.
- Compliance: Cold email shows a real sender and a simple opt-out (with required details where applicable); spam obscures identity or makes opting out hard.
- Infrastructure: Cold email uses authenticated, warmed domains (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) with steady volumes and ongoing hygiene; spam relies on blast tools, weak authentication, purchased lists, and erratic sending.
Keep these four aligned and your outreach is far more likely to be treated as legitimate communication, and to reach the inbox.
What is a manual spam report?
A manual spam report happens when a recipient clicks “Report spam/Junk” in their mailbox. That click creates an ISP-level complaint against your sending domain (and often the specific mailbox), training filters to treat future messages from you as unwanted. In practice, it tells the provider your message is spam and that similar mail from you should be filtered.
It is not the same as an unsubscribe. An unsubscribe simply says “stop emailing me” and usually improves list quality. A spam report signals “this is abuse,” which lowers domain reputation, increases spam placement, and can lead to throttling or suspensions.
To reduce reports, make the opt-out easy to find, keep messages clearly relevant, avoid misleading subject lines, and space follow-ups so they don’t feel relentless.
Below is a visual of a manual spam report inside the Google Workspace:
What are the legal boundaries for cold email vs. spam?
Cold email is legal in many jurisdictions if you identify yourself, provide a working opt-out, and follow local rules on consent. In the U.S., CAN-SPAM allows commercial email without prior consent, but you must include accurate sender info, an unsubscribe mechanism, and honor opt-outs promptly. Violations carry penalties enforced by the FTC.
In the EU/UK, rules are stricter for emails to individuals: PECR requires consent or a narrow “soft opt-in” for existing customers; corporate subscribers (limited companies) are treated differently but you should still respect objections and keep a do-not-email list. GDPR then governs how you process any personal data.
In Canada, CASL requires express or implied consent, clear sender identification, and an unsubscribe in every message. If you’re prospecting Canadian recipients, assume consent is needed unless a specific implied-consent condition applies.
From a deliverability standpoint, infrastructure also sets boundaries. Major providers like Gmail and Microsoft require authenticated mail (SPF/DKIM), alignment, and one-click unsubscribe for higher-volume senders. Failing these checks can lead to blocks regardless of content or consent.
DISCLAIMER: This is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal advice — always consult a qualified attorney.
Cold email vs. spam at a glance
If you’re selling globally, map your outreach to the strictest ruleset in your target region and keep authentication and opt-outs airtight — filters treat legal and technical missteps the same way: as risk.
Why do spam reports hurt your cold email campaigns?
Spam reports hurt deliverability because mailbox providers treat them as high-confidence proof your mail is unwanted. They lower your domain reputation and push future messages to spam. Even a small number of complaints relative to sends can trigger throttling or temporary blocks, especially when bounces or low engagement are also present.
The impact then compounds. As more emails land in spam, opens and replies fall, which sends additional negative signals back to providers. That feedback loop slows recovery and often forces teams to reduce volume, lengthen cadences, and rebuild trust before performance returns.
There’s also a team-wide effect. Many corporate filters score risk at the domain level, so one rep’s missteps can lower inbox placement for everyone using the same domain or subdomain. If complaints cluster in a short window (for example, after launching a new sequence), reputation can decline faster.
Recovery typically takes longer than the initial hit. Providers adjust reputation quickly, but climbing back often requires weeks of cleaner sending, lower volume, and tighter targeting. That’s why prevention as clear opt-outs, relevant targeting, proper list cleaning, and real-time verification will always work better than any after-the-fact fix.
What are the most common triggers of spam reports on your cold emails (and how to decrease report rate)?
The most common triggers are overly aggressive cadence and misleading subject lines. Both make recipients feel pressured or tricked, which increases the likelihood they’ll use the report button. Below, we keep your original guidance intact and make it more actionable.
1. Reaching out too frequently over email
In many cold email playbooks, follow-ups are scheduled very tightly (sometimes every 2 days) to maximise response rates. The challenge is that today this pace often feels intrusive and can prompt manual spam reports — particularly at SMBs, where inbox volume is lower and repeated touches stand out more.
When you start to see complaints, we’d advise doubling the gap between follow-ups and/or removing the weakest-performing email in the sequence. Then segment cadence by company size so smaller accounts receive gentler pacing. A conservative starting point:
- SMB prospects: 2–4 total emails with 5–8 total touch points, spread over ~30 days.
- Mid-Market prospects: 3–6 emails with 5–8 touch points, spread over 30–60 days.
- Enterprise prospects: 5–9 emails with 10–18 touch points, spread over 30–60 days.
The principle is to set boundaries that most teams can sustain without driving complaints. If your niche is highly competitive, you may adjust to fewer total emails while preserving wider gaps. It also helps to stagger send times, avoid sending on consecutive days to the same contact, and pause cohorts the moment complaint signals rise.
2. Misleading or Clickbait Subject Lines
Misleading subjects are a frequent cause of reports. While “misleading” is subjective, recipients expect the subject to match the first lines of the email and to reflect a genuine business reason for contact. Intrigue is fine; mismatch is not.
A practical fix if you’re running into report issues is to update your subject lines across the sequence and aim for the body of text in the email to include the same keywords as the subject line has included. This is a forcing function to make the subject line have notable relevance to the email content.
Subject lines that are commonly perceived as misleading tend to include:
- No correlation between subject keywords and the email body.
- False urgency (e.g., “action required”) that the content doesn’t justify.
- Implied enquiry about the prospect’s services when it’s a sales pitch.
If reports persist, rotate out the weakest performer, shorten subjects to a clear, neutral phrase (4–7 words), and test variants that state a straightforward context (role, trigger, or relevant change) rather than clever hooks.
3. Over-Persisting With Unresponsive Contacts
If a contact isn’t opening or engaging, continuing to email them tends to create annoyance rather than interest—and that’s when reports rise. It’s helpful to remove disengaged recipients promptly so your volume is focused on people who are more likely to care.
We’d advise building clear, automatic disengagement triggers in your CRM or sales engagement platform. Use replies and clicks as primary signals (opens are noisy), and set removal rules by company size so you’re fair but firm. For example:
- SMB prospects: remove after 3 unread emails in a row.
- Mid-Market prospects: remove after 4 unread emails in a row.
- Enterprise prospects: remove after 5 unread emails in a row.
This keeps sequences from dragging on for people who aren’t engaging and frees capacity for better-fit contacts.
4. Using Humor That Doesn’t Land Well
Humour in cold emails is high-variance. When it misses — especially in a crowded inbox — it can feel flippant or off-topic and prompt a report. If you’re seeing complaints, we’d suggest pausing humorous lines and replacing them with clear, business-first copy that:
- shows a credible reason for reaching out,
- anchors on a problem the prospect may recognise, and
- aims to start a conversation rather than push for a meeting immediately.
You may get the occasional positive reply from a witty line, but it often masks the broader risk. In practice, straightforward relevance outperforms jokes for cold outreach and reduces the chance a recipient reaches for the report button.
5. Targeting Too Many People at the Same Company
When you contact several people at one company (especially an SMB), versions of your email are more likely to be forwarded to the same decision maker. That often feels like a scattergun approach and can prompt a report. The goal isn’t to avoid multi-threading entirely, but to set sensible guardrails so volume doesn’t read as pressure.
We’d suggest segmenting by company size and capping active contacts per account (anyone emailed in the last 30 days) like this:
- SMBs: maximum 1 active contact in a 30-day period.
- Mid-Market: maximum 3 active contacts in a 30-day period.
- Enterprise: maximum 5 active contacts in a 30-day period.
These limits reduce overlap and keep outreach orderly. Most data providers and SEPs (e.g., ZoomInfo, Cognism, SalesIntel, Apollo) allow you to enforce account-level caps so reps don’t accidentally exceed them.
6. Overusing the Same CTA or Sequence Structure
Repeating the same ask across multiple emails makes outreach feel persistent rather than helpful, which increases report risk. Vary the call to action across the sequence and avoid stacking multiple asks inside a single email.
A reliable CTA style has three traits:
- Only have 1 question in your email, which is the call to action - The more questions you ask, the less answers you get over cold email. Therefore, only have one clear question as your CTA. Even if you have other questions grammatically in your email, only have one of them with a question mark next to it. This helps to emphasize the CTA.
- Do NOT ask for time / a meeting - Research has shown that asking for time with the prospect will instantly decrease your success rate by 50% compared to asking for interest or another CTA, which isn’t based around a meeting.
- Keep your call to action short - Reducing the length of your call to action will help keep your ask concise and improve your response rate. In order to do this, keep your call to action as a stand-alone statement and shorter than 1 line.
7. Excessive Email Threading That Frustrates Prospects
Threading keeps follow-ups in the same conversation (using “Re:”), which can lift engagement because it feels like a running dialogue rather than a new pitch. The risk is overuse: long threads draw attention to how many times you’ve emailed without a response, which can feel relentless and prompt a report.
We’d advise capping any single thread at three emails. If you need to follow up again, change the subject to start a fresh thread and adjust the angle (new context or value). Avoid faux threading (“Re:” with no prior exchange) and trim quoted history so each message is easy to scan.
8. Overconfidence or Assumptive Language in Outreach
Using presumptive or overconfident phrases, result in your emails coming across more like sales or marketing content and less like you're just looking to start a conversation. This creates a sense of self-interest around your approach, increasing the likelihood the prospect will report you as spam.
On the other hand, if your tone is more uncertain in cold emails, this gives the prospect the impression that you are genuinely interested in their issues / business, making you far more likely to receive a response and reduce your report rate.
9. Referring to Previous Emails That Got Ignored
Calling out prior attempts usually backfires. It reminds the recipient you’ve sent multiple emails without a response, which can feel pushy and trigger a report.
Prospects tend to react negatively for three reasons:
- It highlights the number of unanswered emails, making you look like a nuisance.
- The focus shifts to you (“I followed up…”) rather than the prospect’s needs.
- The tone can read as entitled, as if a reply is owed.
We’d advise removing phrases that reference earlier outreach, such as:
- “I’ve tried to reach you a couple of times”
- “Following up on my previous email”
- “I dropped you a note”
- “Just circling back with you”
- “Last attempt from me”
(*Disclaimer - All of the above phrases are taken from real cold outreach campaigns)
A better approach is to start a fresh thread with a new subject and open with a brief, relevant trigger (role, change, or initiative) so the note feels timely rather than repetitious.
10. No Clear Reason or Personalization for the Outreach
Sequences that aren’t well picked or well timed tend to drive more reports. You’ll reduce risk by opening with a Hyper-Relevant Trigger Explanation — one or two lines that show why you’re writing to this person now.
Job title and industry alone aren’t enough today (that’s baseline “spray and pray”). Raise the bar by choosing accounts and contacts based on concrete triggers that make your message relevant. These will be customised based on your product, but examples of data sources to find these triggers are:
- Content they’ve engaged with Linkedin/Twitter - This could be specific content from thought leaders in your niche discussing the problem you address and can be attributed on a logo basis rather than just a per-contact basis.
- Glassdoor reviews - You can refer to key themes or specific pros/cons mentioned by their own employees on glassdoor.
- Job postings - You can refer to and search for companies which are hiring in specific roles, which means they’re likely to be addressing/experiencing the problem you solve. You could also consider new key hires which have been made in the same way.
- Changes in technology - As businesses move from one technology to another, this can signal specific challenges/needs. Their current tech stack is also a way to make your account selection more targeted. (BuiltWith is the best data source for this).
- G2 Crowd Reviews / Other reviews - Either specific reviews people at your target account have submitted on other technologies/services or reviews your target business has received can signal key initiatives, point points and differentiators which create hyper-relevance.
Keep the personalization crisp — one specific, verifiable detail plus a clear reason for reaching out. That combination reads as relevant, lowers defensiveness, and reduces the chance of a manual report.
How do you reinstate a suspended account (and lower risk going forward)?
You reinstate a suspended mailbox by reactivating it in your admin console, then rebuilding reputation slowly while you fix the triggers that caused the suspension. Keep the seat paused in your SEP (Outreach, Salesloft, Close) until volume, cadence, and list hygiene are adjusted.
The path for reinstating an account will depend on your set-up and email provider, but the most common path for G Suite / Gmail users is as follows to simply allow an SDR to log-in to their email account and reinstate its functionality:
- You’ll need your G Suite admin to log-in to the Users section of the Admin Panel.
- After selecting the user which has been suspended you will typically see an option to reactivate them.
- To reactivate the user in question mark them as ‘not spamming’.
Following a suspension you’ll want to immediately conduct the following steps:
- Cut the suspended users’ overall sending limit / target by 50%.
- Rather than simply allowing the user to start emailing at a rate of 50% of their prior volume, you’ll want to throttle their sending from zero, up to the target, over one of the time-frames outlined here.
- Reduce the entire team's volume by 25-50% depending on the severity of decline on your sender reputation following the suspension.
- d) Evaluate your overall sequence and begin to benchmark and iterate your current approach against the 10 causes of suspensions.
It’s important to not ignore reports and continue to send the same sequences regardless of suspensions. As Google outlines after 5 suspensions on a single user inside 1 calendar year you’ll no longer be able to reinstate the user:
In cases where you see suspensions causing significant declines in inbox placement, you’ll want to evaluate moving your cold email efforts onto an alternative domain or subdomain as a long term project to reduce the risk of core business operations being impacted. Allegrow has a playbook to assist with this, for more information you can check our guide on email subdomain best practices.
How does Allegrow prevent cold outreach from being reported as spam?
Allegrow reduces spam reports by stopping high-risk sends before they go out and by flagging the exact patterns that trigger complaints — right inside Outreach, Salesloft, or Close. In practice, your reps keep working while Allegrow's Safety Net prevent the behaviours that make recipients hit “Report spam.”
- Pre-send blocking at the moment of schedule. Safety Net prevents emails to flagged contacts (e.g., known manual reporters, spam traps, dead emails) so those risky messages never leave your system.
- Clarity on catch-alls, not guesswork. Instead of “unknown,” Allegrow returns safe/unsafe decisions at the contact level—avoiding the blind sends that often drive complaints and bounces.
- Continuous hygiene. Unlimited verification lets you re-check aging cohorts and fresh imports, keeping stale records out of active sequences.
- Early warnings on complaint-prone signals. Daily placement cues and hourly SPF/DKIM/DMARC checks surface issues fast, so you can widen follow-up gaps, tighten targeting, or clarify opt-outs before problems escalate.
See it on your own data!
Start a 14-day free trial, verify up to 1,000 contacts through Allegrow, and compare what would be blocked or marked unsafe before your next cadence.
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