Email Delivery Tips for Marketing to Outlook Users

Outlook is the oldest email delivery service provider in the world. It originally started off as Hotmail back on July 4th, 1996, and has since evolved into a web-based suite of webmail, tasks, calendaring services and contacts from Microsoft.  Available in 106 languages and with over 400 million users, Outlook is a preferred email service provider for people from all around the world because of its easy integration with multiple apps and services offered by Microsoft.

The platform follows Microsoft’s Metro design-language and features unlimited storage, contacts management, integrated calendar, Ajax, as well as close integration with Office Online, Skype, and OneDrive.  It’s one of the most popular of the free service emails available on the market today.

Email Delivery: Feedback Loop

With the help of Feedback Loops (FBLs), volume senders can identify campaigns in their traffic that are receiving high numbers of complaint from Outlook users. The Outlook team can detect an abuse of their services with FBL, allowing them to immediately initiate any necessary actions needed. Click here for more information on Outlook’s Feedback Loop.  Scroll to the JMRP section (Junk Mail Reporting Program), and click the link to sign up and start receiving feedback within as little as 72 hours.

 Email Delivery: Whitelist

Whitelists are lists of IP addresses that are expected to send your users legitimate emails. Adding an IP address to your whitelist will categorize the sender as “not spam” ensuring that most of their emails will show up directly in the user’s inbox and not the trash or spam folders. You can find out more about whitelists and block features for email recipients by Outlook here,  Outlook does not currently have a whitelist for senders.

Email Delivery: Postmaster Tool

Outlook’s Postmaster Tool site gives senders information about getting your messages to the right place. The postmaster site is https://mail.live.com/mail/postmaster.aspx, which includes helpful troubleshooting tips at https://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx

SNDS

Microsoft provides sender reputation information with their SNDS program (Smart Network Data Service).  This applies only to IP addresses so in order to get the data you will need to be using a dedicated IP in order to take advantage of this.  The data provided will show reputation, sending volume, complaint rates, spam trap hits, and more.  This is a fantastic tool for any sender.  You can sign up for a free SNDS account at https://postmaster.live.com/snds/.

With Mail Monitor’s Performance and Enterprise plans, you will also be able to track SNDS data each day to easily analyze.  Another advantage of tracking this data through Mail Monitor is that we will track your data over time so that you can easily track trends.  This is very helpful when troubleshooting delivery issues.

Outlook Delivery Tips

Here are 4 tips to help you stay clear for Outlook:

  • Always confirm that your email list was acquired using an opt-in method. It is imperative to have explicit permissions from the users to avoid them marking you as spam.
  • Make sure your emails come with a clear “unsubscribe” section.  Hiding them or keeping it vague will not help you retain any readers – in fact, it will increase the chances of you being marked spam and even reported.
  • Shortened URLs are usually associated with spam by most of the leading webmail service providers, so avoid using them in your email.  Try and keep the URL description as relevant to the subject of your email as possible.
  • Continuously check the sending IP against blacklists.  This needs to be a regular exercise to maintain healthy IPs.

Want to see how the MailMonitor suite of tools can help your business master email deliverability?  Contact us and request a demo!

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