An abuse report is not a rate

Answer An abuse report is not a rate. RFC 5965 defines a format so a complaint or other feedback can travel as a structured email message, with the reported mail attached or described in a way a program can read. One report is one document. A complaint rate is a count of complaints divided by something else, usually a count of messages. The two objects get mashed together in sales calls. They are not the same object.

The note that started this: RFC 5965, An Extensible Format for Email Feedback Reports, RFC 5965.

Affiliate buyers live on rates. A click rate, a lead rate, a complaint rate. The rate is only as honest as the numerator and the denominator. If you buy solo ads for affiliate marketing, and the seller says complaints are low, ask what arrived and what it was divided by. A feeling is not a report. A report is not yet a rate.

The format is often called ARF, for abuse reporting format. The name sounds like a statistic. It is a message format. Mailbox providers and other receivers can use it to send feedback to a sender who has arranged to receive it. Many complaints never become a report you will see. Some reports are about mail that was not yours. Reading the document is the only way to know which case you have.

What is an abuse feedback report?

RFC 5965 defines a format for an email feedback report. It is a structured message about a message. It is not a complaint rate, and it is not a click.

A structured message has parts. There is a human-readable account, and there is machine-readable information about the incident, and there is often a copy of the original message or its headers. This note will not invent the field list. The fields belong to the document. What you need on a buying desk is the habit of asking to see the thing. If the seller says we got an ARF, the next word is show it. If they cannot show it, they may have heard a number from a dashboard and upgraded the noun.

A click is a request to a URL you control, or to a tracker in front of it. A feedback report is mail about mail. A person can complain without clicking. A person can click without complaining. Counting one as the other will make a quiet list look busy, or a loud list look quiet, depending on which mistake you make.

• A report is opened and read before it is called a rate.
• The denominator of any percentage is named.
• A click and a complaint stay in different columns.
• Mail that was not yours is marked as not yours.

Is one abuse report the same as a complaint rate?

No. A report is one document about one incident. A rate is a count divided by a send. Ask for both the report and the denominator before you treat a percentage as a fact.

One angry person on a send of a few hundred is a different afternoon from one angry person on a send of fifty thousand, and both are different from a dashboard that says 0.1 percent with no count underneath. Sellers like the percentage because it looks small. Buyers should like the count because it is checkable. Ask how many reports, over how many accepted messages, on which day, for which creative.

Also ask whether the reports were sampled. Some feedback streams are a fraction of the complaints a provider received. A sampled stream is still useful. It is not the full numerator. A seller who treats a sample as the universe is rounding in their own favor.

Should a solo ad buyer ask for the report itself?

Yes, when the seller cites complaints. The format exists so a report can be read as a report. A sentence that says people complained is not the report.

You are not asking them to forward abuse to the open internet. You are asking, on a private order, for the evidence behind a sentence they already used to reassure you or to scare you. Redact the subscriber if you must. Leave the headers that show the sending domain, the date, and enough of the creative to know it was your mail. A seller who cites complaints and withholds every artifact is asking you to trust a adjective.

RFC 5965 gave feedback a shape so it could be handled on purpose. Handle it on purpose. A rate without a report is a rumor with a percent sign.