Update: Hotmail has finally mitigated our servers. Thanks to everyone who helped maintain the email quality of the system. If you have not reviewed your Email Series yet, please continue to do so. Good email quality is important not only for Email Providers, but also for your subscribers’ experience.
Last week, Hotmail suddenly blocked three of our mail servers.
Our initial mitigation requests were rejected.
This was the first time our mitigation requests had ever been rejected, so we suspected that something was seriously wrong. Unfortunately, Hotmail would not tell us the exact cause, so we had to conduct our own investigation.
To recover our blocked servers and, more importantly, prevent other servers from being blocked, we are now conducting a system-wide email quality audit.
This will be done using 3 approaches.
Approach 1 – We Review Your Email Episodes
We have reviewed tens of thousands of email episodes and marked those with potential problems.
The problems include:
- Deceptive subject lines
- Exaggerated or misleading claims
- Excessive links
- Missing images
- Excessive bold text, CAPITAL LETTERS, large font sizes, emoticons, or spam-like colors and formatting
- Content related to high-yield investments, obscenity, adult content, dating, gambling, or drugs
If an email episode is marked, you will see a notice saying:
“Problem email. Please check.“
above the email subject, as shown below.
Problem emails will now be skipped in the email series.
We decided to skip only the affected emails instead of pausing the entire email series because most members only have a few problematic emails. Pausing the entire campaign would be excessive.
Nevertheless, we strongly recommend fixing problem emails as soon as possible so your campaign can continue normally.
To resume sending the email, simply fix the problem and activate the email again.
A small number of members have had their lists temporarily suspended due to serious email quality issues. If your list has been suspended, please check your support ticket for details. Once the issue has been fixed, simply reply to the ticket so we can review and reactivate your list.
Approach 2 – You Review Your Email Episodes
In Approach 1, we could only perform sample checks.
Now, in Approach 2, we need your help to review all email episodes in your account.
To simplify the process, we have added a “Show Email Body” function in the Email Series section.
When you click it, all emails in the Email Series will be displayed like this:
This allows you to quickly review all emails at one go and identify possible problems.
Approach 3 – Email Broadcasts
Since email broadcasts are one-time emails, the handling is slightly different.
We want to avoid manually approving every broadcast email before sending because that would disrupt your campaigns.
Instead, we will monitor email quality in the background.
If a broadcast email has a quality issue, it will be marked as:
“High-risk email. Please avoid.“
This warning is different from the Email Series warning because broadcast emails are not flagged for minor issues such as missing images. If a broadcast email is flagged, it is usually due to a more serious issue.
Please avoid sending emails of a similar nature to reduce the risk of list suspension or server blocking.
In Summary
It is business as usual, but we need your immediate help to review the email quality of your Email Series.
It is very simple. Just follow these 3 steps:
1) Go to Email Series
2) Click ‘Show Email Body‘
3) Review all the emails at one go and make sure they do not contain the following problems:
- Deceptive subject lines
- Exaggerated or misleading claims
- Excessive links
- Missing images
- Excessive bold text, CAPITAL LETTERS, large font sizes, emoticons, or spam-like colors and formatting
- Content related to high-yield investments, obscenity, adult content, dating, gambling, or drugs
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Improving email quality is a shared responsibility, and your help will greatly improve deliverability for everyone using SendSteed.
Most importantly, it will help us demonstrate to Hotmail that we are taking serious action to improve email quality so that our blocked servers can be mitigated.
I deleted the series, this caught me by surprise? does it fix the problem?
Joel
It caught us by surprise too.
There is no need to delete your entire email series unless most of the emails are problematic.
If only a few emails are flagged, simply review and fix those emails.
Some issues are also minor, such as missing images. As long as your email content is not deceptive and does not promote the types of content listed above, your email series should generally be fine.
In fact, the majority of our members’ email series are good.
I deleted only 1 email in the series that was flagged, it came from a share code I was using. I will be more diligent. Does that fix the problem? I use Gmail for all my LeadsLeap emails…
Joel
Thanks for fixing the problem emails. The issue is not about which email address you use. The issue is with our outbound emails to Hotmail/Outlook addresses.
Imagine this… If your list contains Hotmail/Outlook emails, we will need a mail server to send to them. Right now, some of our servers are blocked. While we still have other servers that can handle the delivery, this puts additional stress on their sending capacity.
More importantly, if the underlying email quality issues are not resolved, more servers may eventually get blocked as well. That’s why we need to clean up the system and ensure the emails being sent are of good quality.
How to solve this
If you have set up Email Series, just do the 3 steps above.
Otherwise, there is nothing you need to do.
I am checking broadcast emails using claude,grok or chatgpt. it is making all corrections
Well it’s all new to me so I’ll do my part to help as instructed. Thank you and please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
My email is normal, no problem.
I use gmail for working with Leadsleap.Thank you for this important notification.
Hey Myriam, can you share how you do this?
I think what she meant was that she uses Gmail as the account email to receive emails from LeadsLeap.
The discussion above is about our SendSteed email marketing service.
If only more affiliate marketing centered autoresponders would do the same? This will just make us step up our game and become better marketers overall. This is a good thing, in my opinion! Thank you for continuing the fight!
Just reviewed my emails, and doesn’t appear that I need to make changes, but I will continue to watch for these types of things not to do. Thanks for all the information and follow-up.
Thanks Kenneth. I’ve gone through my emails and made a few tweaks just to be on the safe side.
Really appreciate all the work you and the team are doing behind the scenes. Platforms like this genuinely help users navigate the ongoing challenges of getting emails delivered properly and reaching the inbox consistently.
Deliverability is becoming harder everywhere these days, so it’s great to see proactive steps being taken to protect the system long-term.
Thanks again for everything you’re doing.
Thank you, Kenneth. I checked my e-mail and made some adjustments just in case.
I really appreciate all the work you and your team do behind the scenes. Platforms like these really help users to overcome the challenge of correctly receiving e-mails and ensuring that they arrive consistently in their inbox.
Deliverability is increasingly difficult in all countries these days, so it is fantastic to see that proactive measures are being taken to protect the system in the long term.
Thank you very much for everything you do.
Sir I am not facing any problems whatsoever in the emails routed through Leadsleap.com. I am reading all the emails sent via leadsleap sponsors and if i am interested i am signing up accounts with these emails. No problems. Thanks
normal for me
Hi Kenneth,
Been through and think I am all good. It’s actually a useful enhancement!
Also found some email series I no longer need so I deleted them!
Glad you are doing this, I receive some appalling emails from various marketers and the whole industry needs cleaning up so that those of us who are legit don’t get tarred with the same brush.
All good for me.
So now, if anyone enters a Hotmail email address on the squeeze page, does our system send them a confirmation email for double opt-in?
I just want to confirm whether the confirmation emails are delivering to Hotmail/Outlook inboxes
Yes. We have other servers that are not blocked.
thanks for the information and the awareness.
thanks for the information
Hi Kenneth,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It is a demonstration of the fact that this is a reputable service, and users can be confident using it.
I have checked my emails and have not found anything amiss. I will do another check again, soon, just to be sure everything’s all right.
Good
no problem
i have checked my emails i think the issue was solved by viewing spasms
thanks
Hi, I got an error trying to activate my new list. It is saved as a draft. Could you please help me look into it and activate it? Thank you.
Please open a support ticket. Blog comment is only for comments related to the context of the post.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Good day Kenneth,
I am a newbie on your platform and still learning how to make the most of the tools provided. I will do my best to follow the rules as stipulated.
I have checked my list and found no email that was tagged, I will do my part.
Thank you for informing and keeping us updated.
sir I have read potential problems that has been highlighted above and accordingly will take action as mentioned above. Thanks
hotmail, aol, and other email clients have been blocking email delevery for years, is nothing new. If someone subscribribes to my list using these email addresses I deltete them immediatly , they are useless leads.