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Recipients may click “report spam” buttons, but they often aren’t aware of the consequences of doing so, according to a new survey from Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa.

More than half of all respondents (56%), said clicking “this is spam” buttons will "filter all email from that sender". But 21% believe it will notify the sender that the recipient did not find that specific email useful and that the sender will "do a better job of mailing me" in the future. Disturbingly, nearly half (47%) believe they will be unsubscribed from the list.

The perception problems don’t end there: While, according to the study, the direct marketing community would define spam as unsolicited commercial e-mail, consumers are less likely to be so technical, categorizing it instead based on their level of annoyance.

Recipients also may use spam-reporting buttons in ways unintended by ISPs. Rather than limit these clicks to unsolicited, irrelevant marketing messages, 56% consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is "just not interesting to me", while 50% of respondents consider "too frequent emails from companies I know" to be spam. And 31% cite "emails that were once useful but aren't relevant anymore". (Respondents could select more than one answer for multiple questions in the survey.)

As a result, 43% of consumers forgo advertiser-supplied unsubscribe links in email and simply use the Internet service providers’ (ISP's) "report spam" button to unsubscribe from an advertiser's list -- regardless of whether or not the email fits the consumer's definition of spam. Moreover, 21% use the "report spam" button to unsubscribe from email they do not consider spam.

This misuse of “spam report” buttons is underscored by the reasons survey respondents gave for using them. Nearly half of respondents (48%) provided a reason other than "did not sign up for email" for why they reported an email as spam. Respondents cited a variety of non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button, including "the email was not of interest to me" (41%); "I receive too much email from the sender" (25%); and "I receive too much email from all senders" (20%).

"Spam complaints are the primary metric that ISPs use to determine email delivery. This study shows that consumers don't really understand how the complaint system works and that emailers don't understand how consumers define spam," said Stefan Tornquist, research director at MarketingSherpa, in a statement.

Q Interactive offered two suggestions to ISPs, in hopes these would start to alleviate this disconnect. First, ISPs should replace the broken 'report spam' button with buttons that more clearly indicate consumers' intentions such as an 'unsubscribe' button and an 'undesired' button. Secon,d They should categorize email senders based on their practices to identify and reward senders who follow best practices in transparency and permission.