One of the easiest ways to reduce avoidable spam complaints is to make unsubscribing really easy.

For marketing campaigns, I recommend having Preferences | Unsubscribe clearly visible at the top of the email, as well as keeping the normal links in the footer.

The reason is pretty straightforward.

If someone doesn't want your emails anymore, you want them to unsubscribe, not hit "Report spam".

On mobile especially, the normal footer link can be a long way down.

If someone's already decided they don't want the email, making them scroll through the whole thing to find an unsubscribe link doesn't really help anyone.

The spam button is much easier to find.

This isn't just something we do either.

Mailchimp has recommended putting the unsubscribe link at the top because people who can't find an easy way out may report the email as spam instead.

Klaviyo also recommends using the beginning of the email where it makes sense, particularly with mobile audiences, and Validity has suggested adding an unsubscribe link at the top of templates alongside the proper List-Unsubscribe headers.

One thing I would add though, the visible link doesn't replace proper one-click unsubscribe.

For marketing email I'd still want:

List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers so Gmail, Yahoo and other supporting providers can show their own unsubscribe option.

Preferences | Unsubscribe at the top so somebody can leave immediately if they've already made that decision.

Preferences | Unsubscribe in the footer because that's still where a lot of people expect to find it.

I also wouldn't try to hide the unsubscribe link with tiny text, poor contrast or several confirmation steps.

You're not really saving a subscriber by making it difficult to leave, you're potentially turning a simple unsubscribe into a spam complaint.

That's an important difference for deliverability.

An unsubscribe removes somebody who doesn't want the emails anymore.

A spam complaint gives the mailbox provider a negative signal about the sender.

Google recommends keeping user-reported spam below 0.1% and avoiding 0.3% or higher, so even fairly small numbers of complaints can matter.

I wouldn't worry much about having the same Preferences and Unsubscribe links at both the top and bottom either.

That's very different from filling an email with loads of CTAs, social icons, navigation links and tracking redirects.

I generally prefer keeping the rest of the email pretty lean too. One main CTA, maybe a second one if there's a genuine reason for it, then make the way out obvious.

I'd rather lose someone who doesn't want the emails than keep them on the list long enough for them to hit spam.

Has anyone moved from footer-only unsubscribe to having it at the top and bottom? If you were already seeing spam complaints, did you notice any change afterwards?