Important: Changes to Microsoft (Outlook) Bulk Email Sending

Important: Changes to Microsoft (Outlook) Bulk Email Sending

Dear Marketers,

We want to bring your attention to an important upcoming change announced by Microsoft (Outlook) that will impact users sending bulk emails to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, and other Microsoft-hosted inboxes. This update focuses on strengthening email authentication to improve inbox security and reduce spam. These measures will help reduce spoofing, phishing, and spam activity, empowering legitimate senders with stronger brand protection and better deliverability.

Microsoft's New Requirements for Bulk Senders:

Microsoft is introducing new requirements for domains sending more than 5,000 emails per day. Starting May 5th, 2025, Outlook will begin enforcing stricter email authentication standards.

Key Changes to Be Aware Of:

  • Mandatory SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Your sending domain must pass SPF authentication. Ensure your domain's DNS record accurately lists all authorized IP addresses and hosts that send emails on your behalf.

  • Mandatory DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Your emails must pass DKIM authentication. This validates the integrity and authenticity of your emails.

  • Mandatory DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Your domain must have a DMARC record in place, and alignment with either SPF or DKIM (preferably both for optimal deliverability).

Impact on Non-Compliant Senders:

  • Initial Routing to Junk: After May 5th, 2025, emails from high-volume senders that do not comply with these authentication requirements will initially be routed to the Junk folder.

  • Future Rejection: Microsoft has stated that in the future, non-compliant emails will be rejected entirely to further protect their users.

Recommendations for Zoho Marketing Automation Users:

As users of Zoho Marketing Automation, especially if you send bulk email campaigns that might exceed 5,000 emails per day to Microsoft-hosted inboxes, it's crucial to take the following steps now to ensure your email deliverability is not affected:

  • Review Your DNS Records: Audit your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for the domains you use to send emails through Zoho Marketing Automation. Verify that they are correctly configured and accurately reflect your sending infrastructure.

  • Ensure SPF Passes: Confirm that your SPF record includes all necessary sending sources for Zoho Marketing Automation.

  • Ensure DKIM is Implemented: Verify that DKIM signing is properly set up for your sending domains within Zoho Marketing Automation.

  • Implement DMARC: If you haven't already, implement a DMARC record in your DNS. Starting with p=none allows you to monitor your email authentication results before moving to stricter policies.

  • Configure Custom Return Path: This dedicated custom return-path address allows you to receive detailed notifications about email bounces, enabling you to analyze delivery issues and proactively manage your email lists.

  • Follow Email Hygiene Best Practices: While not strictly mandatory yet, adopting the following practices will further enhance your deliverability and sender reputation:

    • Use compliant and valid "From" and "Reply-To" addresses.

    • Include functional and easily accessible unsubscribe links.

    • Maintain clean email lists and manage bounces effectively.

    • Practice transparent mailing practices with clear subject lines and proper consent.

Next Steps for You:

  1. Prepare Now: Review and update your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records immediately.

  2. Help Resources: If you need assistance with setting up SPF, DKIM, or DMARC, refer to Zoho Marketing Automation's help documentation.

This update from Microsoft underscores the increasing importance of proper email authentication for ensuring reliable email delivery. By taking proactive steps now, you can safeguard your email campaigns and maintain strong deliverability to Outlook inboxes.

We will continue to monitor this situation and provide any further updates or guidance relevant to using Zoho Marketing Automation. Keep an eye on our community forums and announcements.

Notes
It's important to note that Zoho Marketing Automation will not impose restrictions on email sending; however, users are strongly encouraged to proactively implement these authentication measures on their end to maximize deliverability

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support@zohomarketingautomation.com or engage in the community forums.

Happy Marketing!
The Zoho Marketing Automation Team

    • Sticky Posts

    • Marketer’s Space - Automating CRM Actions with Journeys – Part 2

      Hello marketers! Welcome back to another post in Marketer’s Space. In our previous post, we explored how CRM actions in Journeys help marketing and sales teams work together by nurturing CRM leads and pushing only engaged prospects back to sales. If you

    • Introducing automation and utility conversations in WhatsApp marketing

      We’re excited to announce the addition of two new features to our WhatsApp integration: Automation and Utility conversations. These enhancements will allow you to streamline your marketing efforts and engage with your customers more effectively by automating

    • Tip of the week 02 - The art of 'seeing' your leads

      What's the last page that your lead visited before signing up for your brand? What was the page that first convinced your lead to explore more about you? Where are your leads coming in from? Well, these are some perennial questions today's marketers live upon. And, knowing the answers to these questions is crucial, considering the vitality of leads in every business. In the journey of finding lead opportunities, it's important to understand that every detail about a lead is useful. While the channels

    • Zoho Marketing Automation Update: Topics, Contacts, and List Management

      At Zoho Marketing Automation, our highest priority is making it easier for you to use our product to accomplish your business goals. With that in mind, we are updating three of our pivotal features: Topic, Contacts, and List Management.   These existing

    • Important: Zoho MarketingHub is now Zoho Marketing Automation

      Hello Everyone,   We hope you all are doing well. We'd like to notify you that we have rebranded Zoho MarketingHub to Zoho Marketing Automation. We'll discontinue using the term "MarketingHub" from May 26, 2021. However, there will be no changes in the

    • Recent Topics

    • Time Entry Notifications

      Hi All - I have support staff who place notes of their work in the time entry section of Zoho Desk. Is there a specific workflow or setting I need to enable to have the ticket holder updated via email when an entry is saved?

    • How to report 'Response violation' OR 'Resolution violation'

      Hi, I want to report on SLA Violation Type. I grouped my tickets on this column. It seems I only get 'Response and Resolution Violation' or 'Not Violated'. The former seems to be given to a ticket if only the Response Time was violated. I would expect

    • [Webinar] Automate sales and presales workflows with Writer

      Sales involves sharing a wide range of documents with customers across the presales, sales, and post-sales stages: NDAs, quotes, invoices, sales orders, and delivery paperwork. Generating and managing these documents manually slows down the overall sales

    • Power of Automation :: Quick way to associate your Projects with Zoho CRM

      A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and

    • Date triggering Workflow rule

      I have a function triggered by a workflow rule. The function takes a date and creates a task for that date and fills in a field with the name of the day for that date. It also updates the status field of the record. The workflow rule is set to run whenever

    • Restricting contact creation

      Hi all! I am looking to use Zoho Desk in a part of the business that takes end user enquiries. These are generally single interactions, and not linked to an account name. As Desk is Account centric, has anyone designed a way to manage these incoming emails

    • Import Holiday Calendars

      HI Zoho Is there anyway of importing an online calendar like https://www.calendarlabs.com into the business hours calendars, to speed up setup of holiday calendars. Also could we also request a feature where you can specify a Holiday as hours, i.e it could be that the company is on a 1/2 day due to a holiday or when it is Eid in the UAE and they are only allowed to work restricted hours so we need the calendar to be flexible to allow for this. Regards Jamie

    • Filtering Tickets based on Email headers

      We're starting to get a lot more junk coming into our Zoho Desk, which is then triggering unnecessary email alerts to agents. Once thing we could do to cut this junk in half, is to filter tickets based on email headers. Any email containing the `List-Unsubscribe`

    • Error 550 5.4.1

      I’ve tried sending an email to someone but keep receiving this back. Any help would be greatly appreciated 

    • Billing Management: #2 Fair way of Billing- Prorated Billing

      Hello, From speaking about the traditional ways of billing in the previous post, we are moving into the deep sea of billing. We are now in a zone to break out the most complex yet, I would call it the fairest way of billing, the Prorated Billing. Prorated

    • Has Anyone successfully integrated Zoho and Sage Intact?

      Hey all, We’re evaluating Zoho One + Sage Intacct and I’m trying to connect with anyone who has actually implemented the two together.Specifically, I’d love to know: -- Which functions you kept in Zoho vs. Intacct (e.g., Product Catalog, AR/AP, invoicing,

    • How can I filter a field integration?

      Hi,  I have a field integration from CRM "Products" in a form, and I have three product Categories in CRM. I only need to see Products of a category. Thanks for you answers.

    • Adding image in HTML report page

      Hi, I want to know two things: 1. Can anyone advise how to add an image in HTML report. The tagged used is <img> but what path do I mention for the image to be added in the HTML report. 2. Also, I want to know if I am creating an application for the market

    • How to change view of HTML report based on device but always print in A4

      Hello everyone, I am aware that HTML report view can be configured to adjust according to the screen size like Laptop, Tablet and mobile using media queries. But my concern is no matter on which device the reports is opened when printed should always

    • Age Calculation

      I've attempted to calculate the age of someone based on their birthday input by using the formula field. It works but I don't want all those decimals on there. I then tried to use "set variable" after birthday input but I get a field type mismatch, long vs. floating. Any ideas would be wonderful.

    • Search on Custom Field

      We're working on an integration with the Zoho FSM API and are trying to retrieve companies based on a custom field we added to the Companies module. However, we can't find a way to filter or query records using custom fields through the API. We have a

    • Sendmail function / custom action?

      I've setup a function hoping to email various business departments the details of a record once all work in that record is complete so gone about setting up a custom action in such way that each record line on the report has a button to click. Question is how do I actually include data from that record in the email that is sent when the button is clicked? I had thought that since this were being sent per record the email would include the data which had been entered

    • API to post drafts for social media

      I we want to post draft posts to our zoho social account and then approve and schedule them within Zoho social. is this possible with for example: https://apis.zoho.com/social/v2/post TIA Jon

    • Canvas View in Zoho Recruit

      Is it possible or would it be possible to have the new 'Canvas View' in Zoho Recruit?

    • What impactful sales coaching techniques have you used to boost your team's performance?

      I'm curious about the real-world impact of sales coaching on team performance. What specific techniques or strategies have you found most effective in driving consistent improvement and growth in your sales team? Any success stories or lessons learned

    • Adding Taxes to paid consultations in Zoho Bookings

      I created a 'paid' consultation under Zoho Booking and integrated it with payment gateways for online/instant payment before a booking is done. How can I add 'taxes' to the price of consultation? I can add taxes to other Zoho apps (liks Books, Checkout,

    • Zoho Finance Suite - Customer Custom Tabs - Dynamic Link

      Hi Finance Suite team, When creating a Custom Tab for a Client Portal, there is no option to add dynamic parameters. This would be very helpful for adding Zoho Analytics dashboards which can be dynamically filtered through the URL to only show information

    • Possible to bold or indent text in the description field?

      As part of one item, I often have a detailed description that would be much easier to read if there was the ability to have a bulleted list or bold text and the like. Is this possible? My last invoicing software allowed markup in the field so, for example, an asterisk meant a bullet. I haven't been able to find any documentation related to this.  Any information would be appreciated. Thank you.

    • How can I setup Zoho MCP with Chat GPT

      I can set up custom connections with Chat GPT but I cat an error when I try to set it up. The error is: "This MCP server can't be used by ChatGPT to search information because it doesn't implement our specification: search action not found" Thoughts?

    • Formatting of Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss Reports

      The default format of the Balance Sheet and P&L Reports are based on the Account Types and then the individual accounts within the Chart of Accounts. These are then ordered alphabetically under these sub-headings and one is unable to re-order these or

    • UK MTD reports concerning turnover and cerash accounting

      Hi I am a sole trader, and I have just started with Zoho Books in order to comply with the new HMRC requirements. I use 'cash basis' - which I understand to mean that income is when the cash comes in (not the invoice date) and expenses are when they are

    • Retainer Invoice.

      Why ZOHO not have facilities to deduct partially advance payment from an invoice.

    • IMAP Server not responding.

      Trying to connect a phone via IMAP and getting "imap.zoho.com not responding." Is the server down, for maintenance or otherwise? I've tried this on two different devices and got the same error on both.

    • Share saved filters between others

      Hi, I am in charge to setup all zoho system in our company. I am preparing saved filters for everybody, but the only one can see its me. How can others see it? Thanks

    • GST Slabs Redefined: Stay Compliant Using Zoho Books!

      Hello Everyone! The Government of India is rolling out new GST rates, a major reform aimed at simplifying the current tax structure starting 22 September 2025. GST will move from four slabs (5%, 12%, 18%, 28%) to two main slabs (5% and 18%), plus a special

    • Kanban view on Zoho CRM mobile app!

      What is Kanban? The name doesn't sound English, right? Yes, Kanban is a Japanese word which means 'Card you can see'. As per the meaning, Kanban in CRM is a type of list view in which the records will be displayed in cards and categorized under the given

    • Presenting ABM for Zoho CRM: Expand and retain your customers with precision

      Picture this scenario: You're a growing SaaS company ready to launch a powerful business suite, and are looking to gain traction and momentum. But as a business with a tight budget, you know acquiring new customers is slow, expensive, and often delivers

    • No practical examples of how survey data is analyzed

      There are no examples of analysis with analytics of zoho survey data. Only survey meta data is analyzed, such as number of completes, not actual analysis of responses, such as the % in each gender, cross-tabulations of survey responses. One strange characteristic

    • Zoho Creator as LMS and Membership Solution

      My client is interested in using Zoho One apps to deploy their membership academy offer. Zoho Creator was an option that came up in my research: Here are the components of the program/offer: 1. Membership portal - individual login credentials for each

    • Adding Chargebee as a Data Connector

      Is it possible to get Chargebee added as a Zoho Analytics data connector?

    • Webform & spam

      Hi, We set up 2 webform on our website, fowarding the content to Zoho CRM. Since it has been opened up, we are getting lot of spam message (for now about 20 a day). To lower the  amount of false new leads we added the captcha field and new enquieries are send to the Approval Leads list. However we still get some spam. Is there any "anti spam" mechanism built in Zoho CRM, or how is the best way to avoid these kind of spam ? Thanks

    • Dropbox to Workdrive

      Namaste, Trust you all are doing well. Wanted to check how this can be done with Zoho flow. I typically receive dropbox links from my clients. Is there a way where I can provide the link to Zoho flow and it downloads the files from dropbox link to a work

    • Deals by Stages Funnel not showing in correct order

      Using the Stage-Probability Mapping for the Deals module we have created a steps our deals will pass through, RFQ, Closed/Lost, Declined/No-Go, Pricing, Submitted, Negotiations, Won. However when I view the Deal By Stages Funnel it does not show in the

    • Turning off the new UI

      Tried the new 'enhanced' UI and actively dislike it. Anyone know how to revert back?

    • Confirmation prompt before a custom button action is triggered

      Have you ever created a custom button and just hoped that you/your users are prompted first to confirm the action? Well, Zoho knows this concept. For example, in blueprint, whenever we want to advance to the next state by clicking the transition, it is

    • Next Page