Why some people don't receive your emails (deliverability explained)

“A lot of my recipients didn’t get my email — not even in their spam folder.” It’s one of the most common worries we hear, especially about @hotmail.com, @live.com and @outlook.com addresses. The reassuring news: in almost every case the emails are arriving. This article explains what’s really happening and the few things you can do to reach even more inboxes.

“Delivered” is not the same as “opened”#

Every email travels through four stages, and “delivered” is only the second one:

When an email is delivered, it means the recipient’s mail provider accepted it — there was no bounce, so it arrived. But “delivered” tells you nothing about whether the person actually opened it.

On a healthy list, 40–60% of people never open a given email, even when it lands neatly in their inbox. They’re busy, they skim past it, or the subject line didn’t grab them that day. So when a handful of recipients say “I didn’t get it,” they almost always mean “I didn’t notice or open it” — not that it failed to arrive.

Why Hotmail, Live and Outlook feel “worse”#

Microsoft (Hotmail / Live / Outlook) is stricter than Gmail about where it places mail, and quieter about it. Two things make these addresses seem like they never receive your emails:

• Images are blocked by default. We measure “opens” with a tiny invisible image. Outlook and Hotmail hide images until the reader clicks “show images”, so many people who did receive and read your email are never counted as an open. Their real read rate is higher than the report shows.
• Engagement counts for a lot. Microsoft leans heavily on whether your recipients usually open and click your mail. Old, inactive or never-engaged addresses are the ones most likely to be filtered into Junk.

This is normal and affects every sender — it is not a sign that something is broken with your account.

Who takes care of what#

Good deliverability is a partnership. Here is the split between what Hugo handles automatically and what stays in your hands:

Your domain authentication — the technical SPF, DKIM and DMARC records that prove your mail genuinely comes from you — is set up and verified on our side. You do not need to change any DNS records for your emails to be properly authenticated.

How to reach more inboxes#

The biggest wins are almost always about your list and your content, not technical settings:

• Keep your list clean. Remove addresses that haven’t opened or clicked anything in 6–12 months. A smaller, engaged list reaches the inbox far better than a large, cold one.
• Never email bought or scraped lists. They trigger complaints and quickly damage your reputation.
• Send consistently and relevantly. A recognisable sender name, a clear subject line, and content people expect keep your engagement — and your inbox placement — high.
• Ask your key contacts to add your sending address to their contacts and to move any email that landed in Junk back to their inbox. This teaches their provider to trust you.

Monitor your Gmail reputation for free#

If you send to many Gmail addresses, Google Postmaster Tools is a free dashboard that shows how Gmail views your domain — the best free reputation signal available.

1. Go to postmaster.google.com and sign in with a Google account.
2. Add your sending domain and verify it by adding the TXT record Google provides to your DNS (or ask whoever manages your domain to add it).
3. After a few days of sending you will see Domain Reputation (aim for High or Medium), Spam Rate (keep it under 0.1% — the most important number to watch) and Authentication results (which confirm SPF, DKIM and DMARC are passing).

Good to know: Postmaster Tools only covers Gmail, and it needs a meaningful volume of mail to Gmail before it shows data. Microsoft does not offer a comparable tool for senders, so for Hotmail / Outlook the levers are the list-hygiene and engagement tips above.

Still convinced specific people aren’t receiving your emails?#

We’re glad to investigate specific cases. The fastest way for us to help is to send us:

• 5–10 exact email addresses that reported not receiving your email, and
• which campaign and date it was.

With those details we can trace each address individually — whether it was sent, delivered, bounced, or excluded after an earlier bounce or complaint — and give you a precise answer. Reach us any time at support@hugo.events.

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