dotMailer/Windows Live Hotmail Integration

With a whopping 95% of email sent every day classified as spam, deliverability is more important than ever. Here at dotMailer, we are constantly innovating so our users continue to enjoy some of the industry’s highest deliverability rates.  We are now one of the first email service providers to integrate our system with the list-unsubscribe feature recently introduced by Windows Live Hotmail to ensure legitimate emails are not labelled as junk. But what does this mean, and why does it matter?

In the past, deliverability was mainly down to content, but recently the sender’s reputation has become a more important factor.  Reputation is carefully monitored by ISPs, who use spam filters to ensure users only receive the emails they want.  At the same time, ISPs face an ongoing challenge to avoid ‘false positives’ – legitimate emails mistakenly labelled as spam.

It’s great that dotMailer have introduced this feature and are doing all they can to ensure recipients get the emails they want whilst helping legitimate senders improve their sender reputation. We believe this functionality will help improve email senders’ ability to maintain their mailing lists and respond to unsubscribe requests. Microsoft is committed to providing customers with a safe online experience whilst continuing to improve deliverability for legitimate senders.
- Jo Wickremasinghe, UK Hotmail Product Manager

To this end, Microsoft has introduced new features as part of the Windows Live platform to help bona fide senders improve their email marketing effectiveness.   With over 20 million Hotmail users now migrated to Windows Live Hotmail, and all remaining Hotmail users being moved over within the next few months, all email marketers should work to improve deliverability to these users.

Previously, if Hotmail users did not want to read an email they would typically mark it as ‘junk’ even if they had signed up for the content at some point.  This action prompted an automated script which took the recipient’s email address off the sender’s mailing list.  So far, so good.  

However, many Hotmail users didn’t realise that clicking the ‘junk’ button is treated as an abuse complaint by the ISP, which could lead to the sender being labelled as a spammer and their domain blacklisted, directly impacting on their reputation. 

To help legitimate email marketers falling victim to this user behaviour, Windows Live Hotmail has introduced the new unsubscribe feature.   We have integrated dotMailer’s email system with this feature so that an unsubscribe link is automatically inserted into the header of the email and is visible to all subscribers who have marked you as a safe sender.

When the recipient clicks on the unsubscribe button, they are taken to a dotMailer landing page where they can amend their delivery preferences, or completely unsubscribe from the mailing list. Recipients can easily take themselves off your mailing list without having to search for the unsubscribe link, and without inadvertently tarnishing your reputation.

The deliverability battle is an ongoing one and as email volumes increase, so too will the challenge we face.  But you can rest assured that dotMailer will always be innovating and improving your email service to make sure your reputation and deliverability rates stay high.