Filtering adjustments at Hotmail

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion on various fora recently about increased delivery issues at Hotmail. Some senders are seeing more deferrals, some senders are seeing more mail in the bulk folder. Some senders aren’t seeing any changes.
This leads me to believe that Hotmail made some adjustments to their filtering recently. Given some senders are unaffected, this appears to be a threshold change or a calculation change, tightening up their standards. The changes have been around for long enough now it does look like the filtering is working as intended and Hotmail is not going to roll these changes back.
So what can you do to fix delivery of mail that was good enough at Hotmail a few weeks ago and now isn’t?

  1. Look at your data hygiene. Do you have older addresses that haven’t responded in any way recently? Try removing that data from your mailings for a week or two and see if that improves your delivery.
  2. Check your content for URLs that might be advertised or spammed in mail from IPs other than your own. Use domains you have complete control over in all your mail, both for links and anywhere in the text.
  3. Contact recipients through a non email channel and ask them to add your address to their address book.
  4. Look at performance of your lists per acquisition channel, maybe one of your acquisition processes is giving you poor data. Removing these addresses may improve your overall reputation and get your mail into the inbox.

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SPF records: not really all that important

I’ve been working through some Hotmail issues with a client over the last few months. One of the things that has become clear to me is how little Hotmail actually does with SPF records. In fact, Hotmail completely ignored my client’s SPF record and continued to deliver email into the inbox.
This isn’t just a sender that had a “well, we think most of our email will come from these IPs but aren’t telling you to throw away email that doesn’t” record. In fact, this client specifically said “if email doesn’t come from this /28 range of email addresses, then it is unauthorized and should be thrown away.” The email was being sent from an IP outside of the range listed in the SPF record.
As part of the process involved in fixing the delivery problems, I had the client update their SPF record and then I enrolled their domain in the SenderID program at Hotmail. This didn’t have any effect, though. Hotmail is still not checking SPF for this client. When I asked Hotmail what was going on they said, “We do not do lookups on every sender’s mail.”
So, there you have it folks. The last bastion of SPF/SenderID has abandoned the technology. Even a totally invalid SPF record doesn’t matter, mail can still reach the inbox at Hotmail.

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Reputation monitoring sites

There are a number of sites online that provide public information about reputation of an IP address or domain name.

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Getting removed from an ISP block

A question came up on a mailing list about how long it typically took to resolve a spam block at an ISP. I don’t think that question actually has a single answer, as each ISP has their own, special, process.
ISPA takes 5 minutes. You fill out a form, it runs through their automated system and you’re usually delisted.
ISPB asks a lot of questions in their form, so it takes about 15 minutes to collect all the data they want and 10 minutes to fill out their form. Then, using very, very short words you keep repeating what you need to the tier 1 person who initially responded. That person eventually figures out they can’t blow you off and throws your request to tier 2, who handles it immediately.
ISPC has a different, somewhat long form. Again, you spend time collecting all the data and then fill out the somewhat obscure form. You get a response, but it’s a boilerplate totally unrelated to the initial request, so you keep answering until you find a tier 1 rep who can read and do what you initially asked.
ISPD has a form that takes about 2 minutes to fill out. Unfortunately, it goes to an outsourced postmaster team in the Far East and response times are ranging from days to months right now.
ISPE has an email address and if you catch them on a good day, they’re very helpful. Sometimes there’s no response, though.
ISPF has a troubleshooting page and accept requests to fix things, but never respond in any visible manner.
ISPG they tells you to talk to Spamfiltering Company H.
Spamfiltering company H answers their email in a prompt and friendly manner. OK, sometimes the answers are just “wow, your client/customer/IP range is sending lots of spam,” but hey, it’s an answer.
Spamfiltering company I is a useless bag of protoplasm and don’t even answer the email address they give you on their webpages. In a fit of fairness, I have heard they will occasionally respond, but usually that response is to tell you to go pay some apparently unrelated company a bribe to get delisted.
Spamfiltering company J doesn’t have a lot of ways to contact them, but have a lot of folks that participate in various semi-public arenas so if you’re even slightly part of the community, you can email them and they’re very helpful.
Spamfiltering company K is totally useless, but will tell you to have recipients whitelist you.

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