#060: Sending to Outlook

Read time: 2 minutes

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Are your reply rates dropping? You’re not alone—Microsoft recently strengthened its spam filters, which is impacting deliverability.

Here’s what we know:

Smartlead, with millions of emails sent monthly, reports that reaching Outlook inboxes has become increasingly challenging over the past few weeks. Here’s the data:

Sending from Gmail to Outlook: 74% of emails go to spam!

Sending from Outlook to Outlook: Only 17% reach the primary inbox!

Unfortunately, most companies in the life sciences are using Microsoft 365 (aka Outlook).

So what should you do?

1. Avoid spam-trigger words in your emails. Use this free tool to scan for them: Mailmeteor Spam Checker.

2. Personalize your emails. Sending the same template repeatedly reduces deliverability. Vary your messaging to prevent Outlook from flagging it.

3. Limit outreach to no more than five people per company per day. This helps avoid spam triggers.

4. Validate email addresses before sending. Even “verified” emails from databases can be inaccurate. Tools like LeadMagic make this easy and cost-effective.

5. Know your prospect’s email provider. LeadMagic also identifies which platform they’re using so you can choose alternative channels if necessary.

6. Use other channels like LinkedIn or phone calls for Microsoft 365 users. These avoid spam filters entirely and can be more effective. For managing sequences across platforms, consider a tool like Apollo.io to streamline your outreach.

7. Stop tracking open rates. Open rates are filled with false positives and false negatives. Plus, tracking them increases the likelihood of landing in spam. So if you can’t trust the data and it affects deliverability, just don’t do it.

8. Optimize subject lines and preview text: Write subject lines that avoid jargon keywords like reduce, improve, increase, decrease, etc. Fit your personalization into the first 5 words so it shows up in the preview text. The more engagement your emails get, the less likely they are to end in spam.

Microsoft may relax these filters in the future as they’re also impacting routine emails, but until then, follow these best practices and diversify your outreach channels.

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