Bulk Emails: A Guide for Using Microsoft Office 365

Whether you are sending emails for sales purposes, invoices, etc., email platform is one of the essential tools used to communicate with others quickly and efficiently. More specifically, sending out bulk emails has become more common when simultaneously sending out one generalized email to a large group.

However, sending bulk emails through Microsoft Office 365 can pose certain risks for companies. More often than not, we see an issue with a user sending out a bulk email to their clients through Office 365. As time passed, this later led to the business having issues sending emails, which impacted the organization's ability to communicate effectively, where regular emails ended up in recipients' spam and junk folders.

In this article, Infiniwiz will highlight the best practices when sending out bulk emails.

What Are the Risks When You Send Bulk Emails Through Office 365

Domain Lockdown

Over the years, we have witnessed companies who have had their domains locked down because of the actions of sending out bulk mail. Essentially, Office 365 locks a company's tenant when it detects malicious or spammy behavior associated with the sending of bulk emails. The reason for this is that O365 aims to prevent situations such as phishing, spam, and other threats that could compromise the integrity of the email service and business security.

Recipients mark emails as spam.

When sending bulk emails, recipients might mark emails as spam if they feel the information is irrelevant, too generalized, unsolicited, malicious, or simply having difficulty finding the unsubscribe button. When receiving parties mark bulk emails as spam, a company's domain can get blacklisted. If a domain is blacklisted due to recipients marking emails as spam, it can have several consequences for the company's email deliverability and communication effectiveness, where emails will go straight to recipients' junk folders, or delivery is prevented by email spam filters.

Reputation Damage

When your emails are marked as spam or even blacklisted, this can damage your company's email reputation. Spam filters, for example, look at blacklists and will consider the sender's reputation when it comes to determining if an email is legitimate. This issue can also lead to future emails being filtered or blocked by Office 365.

How long does it take for your domain to be delisted from a blacklist?

The time it takes to be delisted can take up to several weeks. Folderly.com states, "Microsoft may not always be able to remove IP addresses from a blocklist, as removal depends on whether they accept your request or not." However, the process to fix this action consists of submitting a request to Microsoft, and then one needs to wait to get approval from the company. This process only takes up your company's time in effectively communicating and sending out important emails to users.

So, what can businesses do to avoid these risks?

It is important to note that Microsoft Office 365 allows up to 10,000 recipients to receive emails daily. However, this does not include bulk emails. The company highly recommends companies use third-party bulk email providers.

Various providers will allow you to send out bulk emails to whomever you like and even let you categorize groups you would like to send it to, whether it be employees, clients, prospects, referral partners, etc. Some of these providers include Mailchimp, SendGrid, Honeypot, Salesforce, and Constant Contact. These providers are equipped to send emails to groups of users, small or large, with delivery assurance.

Overall, while sending out bulk messages is a great way to send out important information to recipients, it can also pose risks to your business if you are not sending them out using a third service provider. By utilizing reputable third-party providers, businesses can mitigate potential issues such as domain blacklisting, spam markings, and damage to email reputation.