Troubleshooting Emails Delivered to Spam in Office365/Hotmail/Outlook

If your emails sent through MXroute are being delivered to spam folders in Microsoft services (Office365, Hotmail, or Outlook.com), you're not alone. This guide will help you understand the issue and take steps to improve your delivery rates.

Note: MXroute is for personal and business communications only and does not allow marketing or mass email campaigns. These recommendations focus on legitimate person-to-person communication.

Understanding the Issue

Microsoft's email filtering is notably strict, sometimes to the point where even Microsoft's own welcome emails can end up in spam folders. This is a common challenge across the email industry and not specific to MXroute.

Steps to Improve Delivery

1. Check Your Email Configuration

Start by testing your email setup with mail-tester.com. This service will:

• Analyze your email headers
• Check your DNS records
• Verify your content for spam triggers
• Provide an overall score and specific recommendations

Goal: Aim for a 10/10 score on mail-tester.com before proceeding with other steps.

2. Verify Your DNS Configuration

Proper DNS configuration is critical for email deliverability:

• Ensure you've implemented all required DNS records:

  • SPF Records
  • DKIM Records
  • DMARC Records

• Common DNS configuration issues:

  • Multiple conflicting SPF records
  • Missing or incorrect DKIM setup
  • No DMARC policy in place

3. Report False Positives to Microsoft

When your email lands in the recipient's spam folder, ask them to:

• Not just move it to the inbox, but formally report it as "Not Junk" using the built-in reporting functionality
• Mark your sender address as safe or add it to their contacts list

These actions can help improve future delivery of your emails to their inbox.

MXroute's IP Reputation Management

MXroute actively manages the IP reputation of our mail servers:

• As the operator of the IP address space, MXroute (not individual users) monitors our IPs through Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services (SNDS)
• Our technical team continuously works to maintain high deliverability standards
• The server infrastructure is regularly audited and optimized for delivery performance
• We take proactive measures to ensure our shared IP addresses maintain a positive reputation

Additional Recommendations

1. Content Quality: Ensure your emails:

   • Don't contain excessive links or images
   • Maintain a good text-to-image ratio
   • Avoid spam trigger words and phrases
   • Keep emails professional and relevant to recipients

2. Engagement Metrics: Microsoft considers recipient engagement:

   • Encourage regular correspondents to add your address to their contacts
   • Natural engagement with your emails (replies, reasonable link clicks) helps deliverability
   • Focus on sending emails only to people who want to receive them

3. Natural Sending Patterns: Use email for regular person-to-person communication rather than sending numerous messages at once

Need More Help?

While Microsoft's spam filtering decisions are largely beyond our control, our team can review your specific situation to see if we can identify any additional factors that might be affecting deliverability.

If you've followed all these steps and still experience delivery issues to Microsoft services, please create a support ticket with the following information:

• Your mail-tester.com score and report
• The specific domain experiencing issues
• Example email headers showing the problem (if available)
• Steps you've already taken to address the issue

While we may not be able to directly resolve Microsoft's filtering decisions, we can examine your specific case and potentially identify configuration issues or other factors that might be contributing to the problem.