Recently, a few Care2 clients reached out to us to share their struggles getting marketing and fundraising emails into the Microsoft domain inboxes of members on their lists. Microsoft email domains include Hotmail, MSN, Outlook and Live.
Curious to see if this was an emerging trend, Care2 quickly dug into our metrics to see what our data could reveal. Care2 has evaluated the last 30 days of emails sent from our platform to examine our deliverability rates, and fortunately, we have not detected any deliverability issues with Microsoft domains.
Optimizing the deliverability of your emails is always an on-going battle. It’s a good idea to go back to basics to make sure the content you're sending is relevant and welcome to the audience you're targeting. A test email can display nicely in your personal inbox, but not render properly or have broken links in another, depending on the platforms and domains of your audience.
The Care2 development team is always involved in ongoing updates to optimize how our emails look when they arrive in supporter inboxes. For example, Care2 recently updated our Action Alerts template to improve how it renders for Microsoft Outlook users, resolving any issues with links in email HTML.
Your organization can’t always anticipate why some platforms will display code for email in a way that makes it difficult for your supporters to view or click-through. The key to mitigating the problem is to regularly review and test emails beyond your own inbox, desktop, or mobile devices.
The metrics section of your email platform will tell you which systems and devices your list uses the most. Make sure to use services like Litmus.com to regularly check that your emails work properly when read by your members, and update your templates if you find readability or deliverability issues.
Remember, changes in September 2021 to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will affect how open rates are tracked across all industries. With the de-emphasis on open rates as a metric of success, list hygiene and email strategy are becoming more important now than ever.
In the resources section below we’ve listed some reading that can help you navigate these changes and improve your ability to communicate effectively in email.
RESOURCES
Get the latest updates for versions of Outlook that use Microsoft Installer:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/outlook-updates-msi
How to create an email template in Microsoft Outlook:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-an-email-message-template-43ec7142-4dd0-4351-8727-bd0977b6b2d1
Microsoft’s best practices for email marketing in 2021:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/marketing/get-ready-email-marketing
Test your emails across multiple apps and devices before sending to your file:
http://www.litmus.com
The ‘Who What Why’ behind Apple’s privacy changes:
16 actions to keep your nonprofit organization’s emails on track:
