Microsoft is About to Sink My Company

Hello,

We understand that you have additional questions regarding how to improve the reputation of your IPs and, thereby improve deliverability of your email to Outlook.com consumers. To improve and maintain good reputation of your IPs, Microsoft recommends careful review of the best practices found at http://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx as well as those outlined in the Windows Live Deliverability document.

It takes time to improve IP reputation and careful vigilance of your email systems which includes monitoring the information you would receive as a member of JMRP (Junk Mail Reporting Program) and/or SNDS (Smart Network Data Services) to help you identify potential issues, such as, compromised servers, outdated mailing lists, etc.  As an email marketing service, this type of information could be invaluable to you.

There is no silver bullet, unfortunately, to improve or maintain IP reputation.  In addition to the suggestions we've sent before, here are some specific recommendations for you to consider:

.              Monitor user complaints. Outlook.com also has a sender complaint feedback loop program called the Junk Email Reporting Program (JMRP). Enrollment in this free program will benefit you as a sender as it will keep your email lists updated and populated with interested Outlook.com customers. This program will help you to remove those Outlook.com customers who do not want to receive emails from your company. If you are interested in joining this program, please visit http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts 

.              Reduce spam originating from your IP: Sign-up for SNDS. Outlook.com has created the Smart Network Data Services program. This is a service that helps legitimate email senders work with their customers and partners to reduce spam originating from their IP. To register, please go to https://postmaster.live.com/snds/addnetwork.aspx . This program allows a sender to monitor the 'health' and reputation of their IPs.

.              Check other third party block lists. Please visit http://www.senderbase.org to verify that your IP is not being targeted by any third party block lists.

.              Segment your mailing infrastructure by IP: Marketing email, transactional corporate email, "forward to a friend" email and signup emails should be sent from different IPs. This will help to identify what types of messages are being flagged by Outlook.com customers and may help prevent transactional messages from being impacted by any negative reputation that may be impacting IPs used to send marketing communications. If you can arrange for your clients to use different IPs that would also help you to identify whether particular emails or campaigns are being flagged by Outlook.com users. 

.              Strengthen the sign up process: Confirm that you are using a double-opt-in sign up process. This will not help in removing existing Outlook.com customers from your email lists but it will confirm the authenticity of those who sign-up for your email campaigns and newsletters.

.              Do some analysis on the data regarding complaints: Look at Outlook.com customers who have never clicked, opened, responded or bounced in any way. These poor performers could contain many bad addresses.

.              Clean up your lists: Remove those who do not want to receive the emails. Make the unsubscribe process more visible.

.              Apply for the Sender Score Certified Mail program: If you are doing all the above and you continue to have deliverability issues, you may wish to consider joining the Sender Score Certified Mail Program, a third party program administered by Return Path, Inc. Many legitimate mailers and marketers have qualified and joined this program to improve mail deliverability and decrease email from being filtered to the Junk E-mail Folder. Sender Score (www.senderscorecertified.com) is the only service to which we subscribe.

Another option you may want to consider is to encourage your clients and recipients to add your sending email address to their contacts list, or to otherwise indicate that mail from you is wanted, not junk. Let them know that if they do not see your email in the Inbox, they should locate it and mark it as wanted mail from a trusted sender. 

I hope this information has been helpful.

Regards,

Bikash,                 

Outlook.com Deliverability Support

Hello,

My name is Bikash and I am with the Outlook.com Deliverability Support Team. 

As we see you have submitted more than 256 IPs. Please note our issue submission form allows up to 256(/24) IPs per ticket.   

Performing a preliminary investigation before submission will help us to address your issues more efficiently.  Please only submit IP addresses that receive errors indicating a deliverability issue.

Thank you,

Bikash

Outlook.com Deliverability Support