Freemail Reputation Tracking
Besides regular mail deliverability best practices, which you can read about here, it's also important to acknowledge there are a couple of large mail providers that are used by many of your email recipients. As such, this guide will show you how to follow best practices for these specific providers as well as how to access vital data on how those platforms are receiving your emails.
Large Mail Providers
Microsoft
Microsoft's mail platform is divided in 2 distinct platforms. One for Microsoft 365 Exchange mailboxes, which we won't go into here, and their freemail platform Outlook.com, also known as Hotmail, MSN or Live.com. This mail platform almost certainly receives about a third of your application's mail traffic, so following up on your reputation on this platform is essential to guarantee delivery of your emails.
Reputation Tracking
Microsoft provides two vital tools you should use to keep track of both the reputation of your mail domain and get extra insight on blocking events on your server's IP address. Since access to these tools can only be granted by the owner of the actual domain the emails are being sent from, we can't track this for you. As such, we've written the guide below to help you set up this tracking. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact our support team
Smart Network Data Services
Outlook.com Smart Network Data Services is the central access point for tracking your mail deliverability data for the Outlook.com platform. Their FAQ is quite extensive so be sure to check it for extra clarification.
You'll need a Microsoft account yourself to be able to log in to this tool. Once logged in, you'll start by using 'Request Access' for your server. If you don't know your server's IP, you can find it in TurboStack App under 'Credentials'.
To verify you are allowed access to this data, Microsoft will send an email to an email address of your choosing, but limited to a list of authorization addresses, depending on the publicly available data it can find. This usually includes some standard addresses for the server's hostname's domain. So, if your server is named 'web1.hosted-power.dev', you'd get the option to have a verification sent to 'postmaster@hosted-power.dev' or 'abuse@hosted-power.dev'. If none of these addresses exist, you may need to set up a forwarding address to have that mail sent to your own mailbox. If the list does not give you any addresses you have access to, please contact our support team so we can follow up on that issue.
Once you have access, if mail from your IP address is blocked above their threshold rate you will be notified and have extra information regarding the cause of this block available here.
Junk Mail Reporting Program
This tool is a part of SNDS but deserves a specific mention since it allows you to get reports on any mails from your domains that are being reported as junk mail by the Outlook.com recipients. This is highly important, since such reports have an enormous impact on mail reputation on their platform so knowing when this happens and which mails they were can be vital in understanding why your mail gets blocked by Microsoft. Access can only be granted once you already have access to at least one IP address in SNDS, and authorization happens in the same manner, using a postmaster@ or abuse@yourdomain.com address.
Recommendations
Microsoft provides extensive documentation on recommendations for both the content of your mails as well as the technical side of sending them. It is strongly recommended to be aware of these policies, as they are heavily enforced and can lead to your mail traffic being restricted or blocked entirely.
Regarding the technical side, if you've already followed our general email deliverability recommendations, you're already compliant. If not, please refer to that doc for further guidelines.
Google maintains 2 distinct mail platforms. We'll be focussing on the public, personal freemail platform Gmail. This widely used platform is certainly a significant part of your mail traffic's recipients, so it is important to be aware of their best practices as well as set up access to their deliverability tracking tools.
Postmaster Tools
Gmail Postmaster Tools is Google's dashboard for managing the reputation of your email sending domains and IPs. Accessing this tool requires your own Google account and validation of domain ownership will happen through adding a verification TXT record to your domain's DNS zone. If your domain uses our name servers, you can find instructions on managing your DNS zone in our docs. Google provides straightforward instructions on how to set up this access. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact our support team
Recommendations
Google provides extensive documentation on recommendations for both the content of your mails as well as the technical side of sending them. It is strongly recommended to be aware of these policies, as they are increasingly enforced and can lead to your mail traffic being restricted or blocked entirely.
Regarding the technical side, if you've already followed our general email deliverability recommendations, you're already compliant. If not, please refer to that doc for further guidelines.