microsoft
Are emails sent from your G-Suite/Google Workspace corporate email account going to the spam folder (particularly, at Gmail or Microsoft-hosted domains)? Here’s possible reasons why and what to do about it.Make sure you, or your IT person or domain administrator, has fully configured DKIM email authentication for your domain name in Google Workspace. Keep in mind: this does not guarantee inbox placement, but you’ll struggle mightily without it. Outbound email messages need to be authenticated with a DKIM signature specific to your domain name.Ignore the blocklistings. Here’s the scenario: You looked up your Google sending IP address and you see that it’s on the SPAMCOP, SPAM EATING MONEY, SORBS, or UCEPROTECT blocklists. That means it must be related to this spam folder placement, right? No, it is not. Short answer; except for possibly Spamhaus, Google and Microsoft do not use blocklists to determine spam folder placement. There are hundreds of
I’m busy as a bee this week, with so much going on with work (and outside of work), that I’ve not been able to update the blog as much as I would like to. But, I can spare a few minutes to talk about helping a client out yesterday, connecting with them just after he running their first inbox tests and sharing understanding on how to interpret the deliverability results. We walked through this snapshot data showing what it can show, with an eye to identifying difficulties. This time around, like is so often the case, Microsoft was the main problem/focus area found. No mail delivered means they’re probably blocked at Outlook.com/Hotmail.com (but not Office 365). Even before the client checks for the text of bounce messages in their sending platform, we know that they’re going to look like this: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [x.x.x.x] weren’t sent. Please contact
Mashable’s Tim Marcin and others are reporting that a failure in Microsoft’s spam filtering has resulted in Outlook.com (Hotmail) users receiving a bunch of spam in their inbox unexpectedly. Meaning, something broke — a something that would have previously either blocked those messages or relegated them to the Junk Folder.I wasn’t able to confirm this myself; my personal and test Outlook.com addresses are too well protected from public view; meaning they’re not on any common spam lists. I’ve updated my website contact info to use an outlook.com account, so I’m sure I’ll start getting spam there soon. Maybe I’ll be able to observe this for myself. (Hey, that’s aliversonchicago@outlook.com, for all the spambots out there.)This could be causing a unique scenario or two. Not only are bad guys perhaps scrambling to send as much garbage as they can before the spam filter loophole is corrected, but for email sending platforms
Back in October 2019, Microsoft included ARC support in their Microsoft 365 Roadmap, stating that “[ARC] is now enabled for Office 365 hosted mailboxes.” But at that time it could only be used between Office 365 tenants, or from Microsoft’s in-house services. However in June of 2022 they made it possible for each tenant to […]
Multiple folks over on the Mailop list are reporting that Microsoft OLC (Outlook.com/Hotmail/etc)’s IPv6 inbound mail servers are deferring inbound mail delivery attempts with “451 4.7.500 Server busy. Please try again later” errors. The fix seems to be to stop trying to send it over IPv6 and send the mail to any IPv4 MX record instead, and then your queues will drain successfully.What domains are affected? Likely all domains I’ve listed here as handled by Microsoft, and only if you send over IPv6, and only if the recipient domain is a Microsoft-hosted domain that has an MX record with a hostname that maps to an IPv6 address.If you’re sending mail using an ESP or CRM platform, you’re probably not affected by this. Big mail sending platforms, especially US-based ones, almost exclusively use IPv4 IP addresses, not IPv6.Why is this affecting mail over IPv6 only? Nothing has been confirmed, but I
Maybe you have seen this in your inbox test results before? Here’s the scenario. Perhaps your inbox placement testing tool has a dozen seed addresses for a specific ISP or mailbox provider. For that provider, for the message you sent, ten of seed addresses show inbox delivery, but the other two seed addresses show spam folder placement. Confusing, right? What IS your reputation at this mailbox provider? Does this count as spam folder placement or inbox placement? And what should you do about it? Read on to find out.This is what I (jokingly) call the Pepsi Challenge. When you see results like this at an ISP or mailbox provider, it’s because the mailbox provider is doing testing, inviting a sample of your (their) subscriber base to provide feedback on your email messages. It’s a taste test, of sorts, where the mailbox provider wants to know if your flavor of email
ARC (Authenticated Received Chain) is an email authentication mechanism, sort of. The point of ARC is to encapsulate a check of email authentication results and include it in forwarded mail.If I receive email at an address, then I forward mail to another address, authentication results are difficult for the mail server at the second receiving site to interpret correctly. SPF works on a “last hop” methodology, meaning that a server doing an SPF check can only check the server that just connected to it — making it incompatible with email forwarding, because email forwarding involves more servers and thus more “hops.” A DKIM authentication signature is supposed to be compatible with email forwarding, but there are enough glitches out in the wild — encoding problems, rewriting headers for forwarding (or adding headers or footer text for mailing lists) that it just doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time. And then
Microsoft is the land of deliverability challenges right now. I’m hearing it daily from lots and lots of folks: “My (email deliverability) stats are great everywhere else. I’m not buying lists, I’m not doing anything sneaky or evil, but I’m still having Microsoft woes.” Well, you’re not alone. And while I don’t necessarily have an easy fix for you, I wanted to share (and recap) a few resources that you might find useful. The more you know, and all that…My colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz just recently put together a two part series called The Microsoft Conundrum, found over on the Kickbox blog, where she attempts to explain the world to you through Microsoft’s eyes (and through her own experiences):The Microsoft Conundrum – Part 1The Microsoft Conundrum – Part 2And here’s links to prior posts on Spam Resource where I talk about Microsoft blocking and what to do about it:Why does
It’s time for another BIMI update, and this time it’s chock full of new details that you’ll want to know! So let’s get right to it.The Authindicators Working Group (the folks behind the BIMI spec) have just indicated that Apple plans BIMI support! The information published so far suggests that it’s coming this fall to both iOS and MacOS. Beyond that, details are light; so don’t ask me (or them) for greater definition just yet. I’m sure when they have details, they will share. And when they share, I will share.Where does that leave us today? Here’s your status update on ISP support for BIMI as of June, 2022.Yes: Which ISPs/MBPs/email applications support BIMI today or plan to support it in the near future: Apple (iOS and MacOS email clients), Fastmail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. (This also includes Pobox, AOL/Netscape, and Google for Business)Perhaps: Which ISPs are currently considering BIMI support:
Today’s guest post is from deliverability expert Alison Gootee. She writes:I’m here to offer some empathy. If you’re experiencing difficulties delivering to Microsoft domains like Hotmail, Live, MSN, and Outlook, you’re not alone! Many industry veterans have reported similar struggles in their efforts to deliver even the best and most desired mail to Microsoft users in recent weeks. People with years (and decades) of experience are reporting longer remediation processes, requests going unanswered, and details being ignored. Microsoft has been in the game for a long time now, so I picture their mail filtering processes as a Rube Goldberg machine made of old rules, new patches, and conflicting priorities, held together by some Dunkaroos crumbs & Fruitopia that have been there since Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1996 (90s snacks were the best, you can’t change my mind). They’re fine with the way things work, though. It’s Microsoft’s world and we’re