B Evidence Grade B Graded accuracy verified by the review judge Safe to Cite Dated

0.12%

0.12% -- email complaint rate for commercial email (2022)

Name: Email Complaint Rate Statistics
Creator: Lighthouse Intelligence
Published: 2026-09-18

2022 · Return Path

According to a study by Return Path, the average complaint rate for commercial email is 0.12% (1 complaint per 833 emails).

Study date, sample size, or specific methodology not detailed in text
Secondary citation of Return Path research

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Attribution: Return Path View source

Lighthouse Research Team

Last verified: 2026-09-18 · How we verify data →

Source verified Evidence graded

Value

0.12%

Unit

Percentage

Data Vintage

2022

Entity

commercial email

Evidence Quality

Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

61/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Score breakdown

Extraction

Source Trust

Citation Chain

Independence

Methodology

Freshness

Source

Return Path Primary Tier C

https://emailmastery.org/email-marketing-glossary/complaint-rate/ ↗

Confidence: 55/100 Vintage: 2022 Channel: Wayback

Source Article

Complaint Rate

What is the complaint rate for email marketing? There is no definitive answer to this question as the complaint rate for email marketing can vary greatly depending on a number of factors, such as the type of email marketing campaign being run, the recipient list, and the content quality. However, ac…

Original Research

Return Path · Original study ↗

Methodology

Undated study by Return Path (email deliverability firm, acquired by Validity in 2019) on average complaint rate for commercial email. Source states this equals 1 complaint per 833 emails, which is internally consistent with 0.12% (1/833 = 0.0012). No study date, sample size, or report title given; underlying data may predate the 2022 archive date of this page.

Methodology documented

Segmentation

Industrymarketing

Cite this stat

Plain Text

commercial email: 0.12% email complaint rate. Source: Return Path (2022). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/commercial-email-complaint-rate-012

HTML Embed

<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/commercial-email-complaint-rate-012" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>0.12%</strong> -- email complaint rate for commercial email<br><small>Source: Return Path (2022) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/commercial-email-complaint-rate-012" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>

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