Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Hotmail Blocking

Posted by Anonymous on 1/21/2009 at 12:43 PM ET 125 Points
How does hotmail decides who to block, and when they block someone, can this desition be disputed?

The Ip's are clean not listed in any blacklist, however hotmail would block
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 1/21/2009 at 12:52 PM Accepted
    I suggest you start here:
    https://postmaster.msn.com/

    For better or for worse, Hotmail allows email recipients to report email as spam with the click of a mouse. And it's well known that people use this option even when the email is not spam by most standard definitions. (Some recipients even classify "email I'm just tired of getting" as spam...)

    If you get a number of spam reports in a short time, then it's possible that the rest of your messages will be rejected.

    Use the Postmaster information to get the ball rolling. Believe it or not, you will eventually get a reply from a human, not a machine. Depending on your situation, you may be able to improve your deliverability to all MSN-related domains.

    Are you getting feedback reports from the places where your email is not being delivered?

    Remember, though, that this is an ongoing process. Just because you get one round of email through does not mean it will last forever. You have to keep checking your reports and following up accordingly.

    (Another possibility is that you're not keeping your email list clean. If you have a lot of hard bounces from your file and you keep sending to these email addresses over and over, you're going to have trouble.)
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 1/21/2009 at 1:10 PM Member
    How are you sending your email? How do you know it's being blocked?

    If you are using a Web-based solution worth its salt, you should be getting reports that show the details for your bounces and rejections, etc.
  • Posted on 1/23/2009 at 8:31 AM Accepted
    I'd be curious to know what your emails consist of. Are they a 1/2 HTML, 1/2 image ratio? What are the colors and what are your email saying. There are many spam triggers that maybe causing hotmail to block the sends all together. If your email consists of HTML text larger than "4" or is colored red, green, or blue, that is a spam trigger. If you are using all images or all HTML that also triggers the spam filters. Also any use of the terms "free" and "click here" can trigger the spam filters as well.

    Another problem is that if you have a lot of hard bounces coming from hotmail from bad email address or spam reports they may be blocking you for that reason alone

    For more information on spam and email deliverability I have included these two links:

    https://www.listrak.com/university/CAN-SPAM/

    https://www.listrak.com/university/Best-Practices/

    I hope this helps
  • Posted on 1/23/2009 at 3:41 PM Member
    One way to replace the problem of the "click here" is to change the wording around a little, "Follow This Link," "Savings Here," "Shop Now," etc. Using other enticing click through promoting phrases. Also, if the button is an image that you have created, make sure that there are no references to Click Here or Free in any of the alt or title tags, or the file name.
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 1/26/2009 at 9:40 AM Member
    You can use all the best practices you want, but if MSN/Hotmail has your IP blacklisted (and it won't appear on any of the published blacklists if that is the case), you need to connect with someone there and get the matter resolved.

    It takes time, but it can be done, and it's worth it if you need your email delivered to MSN/Hotmail users.
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