4 ms·

I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simp

by rapind 7y ago

I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. I've seen this with my SaaS. We ONLY send transactional emails like purchase receipts and login links (using postmark). We're very intentional about not sending anything remotely resembling marketing or spam, and sending as little as possible. Yet I still get the occasional user who will flag their purchase receipt as spam when all they really mean to do is delete it. They don't get the difference and don't realize that it matters which button they click. I've noticed that in the past year or so gmail has made hitting the spam button more explicit and now have a confirmation message. Obviously they did this because some people were simply mashing that spam button instead of the delete or archive button. I don't even blame the users. Most don't know the impact it has. But bad actors sending tons of spam have trained them to be cynical of any generic form email.

muststopmyths 7y ago
>Yet I still get the occasional user who will flag their purchase receipt as spam when all they really mean to do is delete it. Maybe gmail shouldn't have the spam button right next to delete :) At least that's better than web Outlook's invisible, until you click on the sender, microscopic disposition buttons. I can't count the number of times I've deleted an email instead of opening it.
PretzelFisch 7y ago
I don't think it's always the user. The gmail and outlook UI makes report as spam more prominent then delete. In addition it's easy for accidental inclusion in a users batch spam report because of poor multi select UX.
c3534l 7y ago
It might be because the service sends both spam emails and legitimate emails. Many (maybe even most) sites do this. If this person is getting a thousand emails over the course of a few years, how on Earth are all of those legitimate, especially when they've only replied to a handful of them, implying the majority of emails can oe safely ignored.
digikata 7y ago
What would be nice is a useful mail ML filter which would scan mail flagged spam to trigger a "are you sure this is spam, do you want to delete instead" question.
luckylion 7y ago
> I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. Google does put some senders often into spam for me, but not always. I'm absolutely sure I've never reported them as spam, on the contrary: I've marked their emails as "Not Spam" when I caught them in the spam folder. That had, so far, no influence on the filter. Those aren't "weird" emails either, they are in my language and individual communication, not mass mails.
heavyset_go 7y ago
> I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. And yet other companies with spam reporting features are able to maintain a lower false positive rate with their spam filters.
- Sodman 7y ago
  I'm not sure that other companies near the scale of Gmail have a lower false positive rate. Sure something niche like fastmail which is going to have, on average, much more tech-savy users, will have more accurate user-reported spam filters. Yahoo / Microsoft don't seem to do any better than Google here though, in my experience they're both actually worse.
shadowgovt 7y ago
You should be able to set a filter to catch these before they get spammed out of things you want to receive aren't getting your inbox. Also, a lot of users do perceive receipts as spam.
Goronmon 7y ago
Yet I still get the occasional user who will flag their purchase receipt as spam when all they really mean to do is delete it. They don't get the difference and don't realize that it matters which button they click. I have a relatively high profile email address (first initial and last name) and I almost daily get at least one form of "receipt" from a transaction someone made where they entered my email by mistake. Sometimes I'm in a bad mood and I'll mark anything I see like that as spam partly because its frustrating and partly because I suspect a good number of these emails actually are spam masquerading as receipt/login/etc emails. And I just don't have the energy to figure out which are legit or not.
greggman2 7y ago
I wonder how much bad spam marking happens maliciously. Sign up lots of accounts to your competitor's mailing lists, mark everything they send as spam so that hopefully their email will not make it to their customers giving you more of a chance.
vbezhenar 7y ago
May be you should not send purchase receipt by default? I don't know why everyone does that as I don't care about it at all. If it's not required by law, add button to your UI which will mail receipt (or better just let user download it) and that's about it. While I'm not marking those receipts as spam, I'm sure that some users would do that as it's unwanted mail for them.
- rstupek 7y ago
  I would find it odd not to receive a receipt. A receipt email should not be classified as spam. Anything else I would say would be spam.
- theamk 7y ago
  Please keep sending email receipts by default. The purchase history on website disappears, logins get forgotten and so on. Only receipts in the mailbox stay forever, as I want them to.
- rapind 7y ago
  We actually have users contact our help desk asking for the receipt not realizing it's already in their inbox or spam folder. I've considered adding an opt-out checkbox during checkout but I honestly doubt it would ever be unchecked and if it was opt-in we'd have users contacting support asking for it because they didn't realize they had to check the box. Either way it's one more toggle on the UI which I'm not a fan of unless absolutely necessary. I'm curious if you've run a business and experimented with not sending receipts, and if so how it played out?

by rapind 7y ago

muststopmyths 7y ago

>Yet I still get the occasional user who will flag their purchase receipt as spam when all they really mean to do is delete it. Maybe gmail shouldn't have the spam button right next to delete :) At least that's better than web Outlook's invisible, until you click on the sender, microscopic disposition buttons. I can't count the number of times I've deleted an email instead of opening it.

PretzelFisch 7y ago

I don't think it's always the user. The gmail and outlook UI makes report as spam more prominent then delete. In addition it's easy for accidental inclusion in a users batch spam report because of poor multi select UX.

c3534l 7y ago

It might be because the service sends both spam emails and legitimate emails. Many (maybe even most) sites do this. If this person is getting a thousand emails over the course of a few years, how on Earth are all of those legitimate, especially when they've only replied to a handful of them, implying the majority of emails can oe safely ignored.

digikata 7y ago

What would be nice is a useful mail ML filter which would scan mail flagged spam to trigger a "are you sure this is spam, do you want to delete instead" question.

luckylion 7y ago

> I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. Google does put some senders often into spam for me, but not always. I'm absolutely sure I've never reported them as spam, on the contrary: I've marked their emails as "Not Spam" when I caught them in the spam folder. That had, so far, no influence on the filter. Those aren't "weird" emails either, they are in my language and individual communication, not mass mails.

heavyset_go 7y ago

> I'm not defending gmail, but I will say that some users simply suck (unintentionally). I bet some of your peers are just hitting the spam button instead of simply deleting the email, generating a bad reputation for the sender. And yet other companies with spam reporting features are able to maintain a lower false positive rate with their spam filters.

Sodman 7y ago
I'm not sure that other companies near the scale of Gmail have a lower false positive rate. Sure something niche like fastmail which is going to have, on average, much more tech-savy users, will have more accurate user-reported spam filters. Yahoo / Microsoft don't seem to do any better than Google here though, in my experience they're both actually worse.

shadowgovt 7y ago

You should be able to set a filter to catch these before they get spammed out of things you want to receive aren't getting your inbox. Also, a lot of users do perceive receipts as spam.

Goronmon 7y ago

Yet I still get the occasional user who will flag their purchase receipt as spam when all they really mean to do is delete it. They don't get the difference and don't realize that it matters which button they click. I have a relatively high profile email address (first initial and last name) and I almost daily get at least one form of "receipt" from a transaction someone made where they entered my email by mistake. Sometimes I'm in a bad mood and I'll mark anything I see like that as spam partly because its frustrating and partly because I suspect a good number of these emails actually are spam masquerading as receipt/login/etc emails. And I just don't have the energy to figure out which are legit or not.

greggman2 7y ago

I wonder how much bad spam marking happens maliciously. Sign up lots of accounts to your competitor's mailing lists, mark everything they send as spam so that hopefully their email will not make it to their customers giving you more of a chance.

vbezhenar 7y ago

May be you should not send purchase receipt by default? I don't know why everyone does that as I don't care about it at all. If it's not required by law, add button to your UI which will mail receipt (or better just let user download it) and that's about it. While I'm not marking those receipts as spam, I'm sure that some users would do that as it's unwanted mail for them.

rstupek 7y ago
I would find it odd not to receive a receipt. A receipt email should not be classified as spam. Anything else I would say would be spam.
theamk 7y ago
Please keep sending email receipts by default. The purchase history on website disappears, logins get forgotten and so on. Only receipts in the mailbox stay forever, as I want them to.
rapind 7y ago
We actually have users contact our help desk asking for the receipt not realizing it's already in their inbox or spam folder. I've considered adding an opt-out checkbox during checkout but I honestly doubt it would ever be unchecked and if it was opt-in we'd have users contacting support asking for it because they didn't realize they had to check the box. Either way it's one more toggle on the UI which I'm not a fan of unless absolutely necessary. I'm curious if you've run a business and experimented with not sending receipts, and if so how it played out?