How are spam complaints handled in Marketing Cloud?

Question

When a person marks an email sent from Marketing Cloud as Spam in their email client, what happens?

Marketing Cloud is able to unsubscribe this person and have that subscriber appear as a spam complaint (in the spam complaints exports). How does it do this? Does the ESP send a message directly to MC or is this something handled by RMM?

Answer 1

'Deliverability tools and reports in the Marketing Cloud' covers this. Spam complaints are handled by a Feedback loop with the ESP

Feedback Loop Automatic Processing - Complaints against messages lodged at ISPs with feedback loops will pass back into Marketing Cloud as unsubscribe requests. All Marketing Cloud IPs are enrolled in available feedback loops (FBLs) prior to being assigned to client accounts. Yahoo.com requires mail be sent from a DKIM authenticated domain so you may need to configure a Sender Authentication Package to take full advantage of FBLs.

Answer 2

1. For mailbox providers that do offer a feedback loop, any complaints will be registered and processed by us through the feedback loop
2. For mailbox providers that do not offer a feedback loop, complaints are routed back through list-unsubscribe header, where applicable, and processed
3. For complaints that come back via a direct reply - they are processed through the Reply Mail Management functionality