Understanding Your Outlook Score
Your Outlook/Hotmail deliverability score reflects how likely your email is to reach the inbox at Outlook.com or Hotmail.com. Microsoft's SmartScreen filter has its own weighting criteria, which means your Outlook score may differ from your Gmail score.
Authentication passes, content is clean, and no Microsoft-specific flags detected. Your email should reach the primary inbox for Outlook and Hotmail recipients.
Issues present that may cause routing to Junk. Microsoft applies aggressive spam keyword detection and is particularly sensitive to content-based signals. Review your subject line and HTML structure.
High probability of Junk routing or outright rejection. Authentication failures and aggressive spam keyword usage are the most common causes. Fix authentication records first, then address content issues.
Outlook-specific scoring factors
- SPF and DKIM alignment (Microsoft checks both strictly)
- Spam keyword density in subject and body
- Active content (script tags, object tags)
- From/Reply-To consistency
- Missing unsubscribe mechanism