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Spam complaints against e-mail marketers by Microsoft address holders are potentially about to drop dramatically.

The company has become the first e-mail box provider to answer e-mail marketers’ calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam.

The unsubscribe link has begun appearing in place of the report-and-delete button on some e-mails in Windows Live, the new free e-mail service replacing Hotmail.

However, the system is still being tested and the complaint button may appear along with the unsubscribe button in the final product.

“We are still in beta and there are some UI [user interface] design changes yet to come,” said Brian Holdsworth, senior product manager for the Windows Live platform. “The eventual plan, which can change based on beta feedback, is the ability for somebody to say ‘this is spam’ or ‘this is not spam; I want to unsubscribe.’”

Non-spamming e-mail marketers have been calling for Internet service providers to eliminate their spam-complaint buttons because consumers often use them to prevent mailers’ messages from arriving even though they signed up for the e-mail.

And with complaint rates being the No. 1 factor ISPs use to determine whether or not they should block e-mail from a specific sender, marketers contend their e-mail can easily be unfairly blocked when consumers are simply using the ISP’s spam-complaint button to unsubscribe.

Moreover, marketers contend that many consumers fear using unsubscribe functions marketers provide will simply verify their addresses as live to a spammer and result in more unwanted e-mail.

Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for e-mail service provider Cheetahmail’s parent Experian, said no matter what form the final Windows Live product takes, Microsoft’s unsubscribe function is a positive development for non-spamming commercial e-mailers.

“We’re very excited about this,” he said. “It really gets at the abuse issue. We’ve already tackled the false-positive issue in the inbox, now we have to tackle the false-positive issue with abuse complaints and this is the best way to do this.”

Under Microsoft’s new scheme, if the e-mail arrives at Microsoft with a valid list-unsubscribe function—a line of code that allows ISPs to automatically forward unsubscribe requests back to the sender—and Microsoft’s’s internal “reputation” test determines the sender is not likely to be a spammer, the e-mail will get the unsubscribe button, said Holdsworth.

If the e-mail does not arrive with a valid list-unsubscribe in its header, it will contain the complaint button and no unsubscribe link, Holdsworth said.

Though e-mail deliverability company Return Path’s Sender Score Certified system is Microsoft’s official reputation service provider, e-mailers do not have to be certified by Return Path to get the unsubscribe button, he said. Return Path’s whitelist is simply one of the criteria Microsoft will use to determine if the sender’s reputation is good enough to get the unsubscribe button.

Meanwhile, a consumer hitting the unsubscribe button will not register as a spam complaint, said Holdsworth.

“Choosing unsubscribe does the same thing as delete except it sends the notice back to the sender to say ‘please unsubscribe,’” he said.

Microsoft is in the midst of moving its Hotmail address holders to Windows Live. The change should be completed in the next four to six months, said Holdsworth.