SES: Most complaints come from Hotmail

I am having a similar issue, where all my email are going to spam/junk folder for hotmail.com, I will share here in case it can help.

I found that my emails sent from SES to outlook/hotmail were always sent to spam/junk folder, the main reason was that I am using configure set tracking open and clicks, where the email body has the awstrack.me link.

I did a test removing the configure set tracking open and clicks, then, when the email doesn't have the awstrack.me, the emails were sent to the other tab in hotmail, not send to spam/junk folder.

So, it is not a conclusion yet, but seems that emails that are sent with the track (awstrack.me), they are tagged as spam from outlook/hotmail.

In my case, I disabled the track open/click config set when the destination is outlook/hotmail.

Hello Beesbusy Team!

When you create an SES account, emails are sent from IP addresses shared with other SES users. There are some benefits to leasing dedicated IP addresses exclusively for your use. This option is good for predictable, continuous, high-volume senders offering full control over sender reputation (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/dedicated-ip.html). There is an additional monthly cost for dedicated IPs (https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/).

Smart Network Data Services, offered through the CloudWatch console is an Outlook program used by IP owners to prevent spam. This is provided to Amazon SES customers who lease dedicated IPs (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/snds-metrics-dedicated-ips.html) and covers domains such as Hotmail.com, Outlook.com and live.com.

Best practice is to monitor your sender reputation, which it sounds like you already do. There are a host of reputation metrics available in the AWS Console (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/reputationdashboardmessages.html) along with the ability to create monitoring alarms using CloudWatch (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/reputationdashboard-cloudwatch-alarm.html) to keep you on top of your reputation status.

Finally, check out this section of AWS documentation for various methods of authentication to prevent email spoofing and spamming (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/email-authentication-methods.html).