Hi Heather,
Have you ever considered why people click on the report abuse / report as spam button instead of simply unsubscribing from your mailing list? I have been posing this question to anyone who will talk to me about it lately, as we are noticing an increase in spam abuse reports.
We expect that one of the reasons for the increase in spam abuse reports is the ease with which people can now report emails. For example, Outlook for desktop has introduced a large 'report' button shown in the image above. This may be more prominent than links to reply / forward etc. It's also very handy, compared to scrolling all the way down to the footer where you usually find unsubscribe or manage preference links. We explore this more deeply in our blog post: Why do people report your legitimate email as abuse? which also considers how to reduce the likelihood of people reporting your email.
If your domain* receives too many spam abuse reports it can damage the deliverability of your emails into the inbox. Some email providers will block your domain temporarily if you exceed certain thresholds of abuse levels, so reducing abuse reports is a high priority.
