Alison Gootee: One does not simply ... deliver ... to Microsoft

Today's guest post is from deliverability expert Alison Gootee. She writes:

I'm here to offer some empathy. If you're experiencing difficulties delivering to Microsoft domains like Hotmail, Live, MSN, and Outlook, you're not alone! Many industry veterans have reported similar struggles in their efforts to deliver even the best and most desired mail to Microsoft users in recent weeks. People with years (and decades) of experience are reporting longer remediation processes, requests going unanswered, and details being ignored. Microsoft has been in the game for a long time now, so I picture their mail filtering processes as a Rube Goldberg machine made of old rules, new patches, and conflicting priorities, held together by some Dunkaroos crumbs & Fruitopia that have been there since Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1996 (90s snacks were the best, you can't change my mind). They're fine with the way things work, though. It's Microsoft's world and we're all just emailing in it.

We don't have any solid answers, and we're frustrated, too. Open those tickets, reply with loads of info & screenshots, and use Microsoft's data against them when you can ("Sign up for SNDS and JMRP?! I did and SNDS says we hit zero traps and there have been no complaints!"). Be persistent and detailed. Ask for an escalation, maaaaaybe even express your frustration. 

Feel free to share your MS outrage stories, memes, or silver bullets over my on Linkedin post. And tell all your friends to grow up and use Yahoo or Gmail!

(Thanks again to Alison Gootee for allowing me to repost this from her Linkedin post -- it's quite timely right now. I'm hearing from many folks in all directions that Microsoft is just so quick to block and so slow to unblock and Alison's message helps folks to understand that they're not alone. Also, Alison posts a lot of excellent content; you should follow her on Linkedin and Twitter.)