How to get non-spam through hotmail's spam filter?

What does the 'enhanced' setting look for?

[phaze]

I run a rapidly growing mailing list and have noticed our emails are going into hotmail's junk mail folder when users use the enhanced setting. Does anyone know what the enhanced filter looks for?

I've made sure the return path of every email matches the sender. And all emails are routed via our MX gateway when sent. The reverse dns lookup on our MX gateway returns the valid domain. And yet we're still being dumped into junk on arrival. We aren't in any black-hole lists either.

Any tips will be much appreciated.

pHaze.

[phaze]

*ping*

[Raymond]

I am in pretty much the same situation. Hotmail automatically puts all emails from my password retrieval script into the junk mail folder. We have done alot of tests on different types of email being sent by CDO but nothing can get through Hotmail.

Right now, I just put a big notice on my site telling my visitors to add us on their contacts to avoid loss of emails.

[phantombookman]

I too have encountered this, some emails reach hotmail users OK others straight to junk folder. I actually opened a Hotmail account 2 weeks ago to help combat the problem I was having and did a test run.

I sent the same email to the new account but from 16 different addresses - 10 went straight into the junk folder and 6 appeared in the inbox.

The only thing that I could garner from the experiment was that Hotmail is **** and my heart still sinks when I see a customer with a HM address

[Lord Majestic]

my heart still sinks when I see a customer with a HM address

Sadly I witnessed up to 30% of mailing lists of B2C sites in the UK have people with @hotmail.com address. I don't think they will reveal details of what exatly triggers their filter, so testing is the only way:

1) try changing subject line to something very different yet very legitimate

2) cut email in half, and send only one half - if it triggers spam filter, then cut it in half again and test that bit in order to locate precise paragraph that may contain words that trigger filter.

Painful, might stop working in the future as hotmail upgrades its filter, but hopefull soon top spammers (at least from USA) will get done with extreme prejudice - bounties are already being set for their heads, hopefully some of their henchmen will come forward and do the right thing - turn the masterminds to relevant authorities.

[Raymond]

Lord Majestic, I have used real emails that my friends sent me to hotmail, as the content on my mailing script. None can get through.

I also tested with different mail components like ASPmail, DynuEmail, CDO, CDONT. Same results, they all went to junk.