Introducing Bulk Senders Insight: Optimizing Bulk Email Management for Enterprises

From promotions and deal updates to targeted marketing campaigns, bulk emails play a vital role in modern corporate communications. However, determining the right balance of these messages—what to allow and what to block—is a significant challenge. Many organizations default to standard settings, which often leads to issues such as false positives (FP) and false negatives (FN) in their email workflows.

Understanding Your Organization’s Bulk Email Preferences

In a business, email management falls under the purview of administrators who set policies based on the Bulk Complaint Level (BCL). However, determining the BCL that is best for your organization requires insight into user preferences. Do users prefer to receive a lot of bulk email, or do they prefer a more restrictive approach? Answering these questions accurately is crucial to maintaining efficient email operations.

Introducing Bulk Sender Insights

To address this complexity, we are excited to introduce Bulk Senders Insight, a sophisticated simulation tool designed to help administrators fine-tune their bulk email policies. The tool provides real-time simulations to help you identify optimal BCLs and identify potential FPs and FNs based on user preferences across your tenants. This feature will be rolling out to tenants starting in August. Watch for a message center post about it.

Key features of Bulk Sender Insights

1. Access and Integration: Bulk Sender Insights can be accessed through two routes:
1. Policies & Rules > Threat Policies > Anti-Spam Policies > Select Default Policy > Edit Spam Thresholds and Properties
2. Reports > Email & Collaboration Reports & Insights > Bulk Sender Insights
2. Simulation dynamics: This tool operates on a rolling window simulation derived from the last 60 days of data, allowing administrators to make informed decisions based on recent email trends specific to their organization.
3. Simulation Components:

1. Simulation slider for fine tuning: Adjust BCL and sender quality thresholds to simulate different scenarios.
   1. Set the minimum sender quality required for your desired bulk senders, in the range of 1 to 100. This feature allows administrators to effectively filter out unwanted emails.
2. BCL Level Details: Understand the impact of adjusting BCL levels on the amount of allowed and blocked emails.
3. Aggregate view: Provides a comprehensive overview of simulated changes across your tenants.
4. View Bulk Sender Details: Provides detailed insights into specific sender behavior and its classification.

Let’s understand Bulk Senders Insight for example.

Scenario Overview

Jane, an administrator, wants to manage her email senders so that only trustworthy and relevant emails reach the organization’s inbox. She uses Bulk Senders Insight to achieve this.

Step by step process

1. Adjust the bulk level slider:
   • Jane checks that the mass level slider is set to level 7.
   • She reviews the caller list at different levels, simulating:
     • Level 1: In rare cases of personal contact and outgoing communication.
     • Level 5: Medium-sized newsletters and promotional emails.
     • Level 8: High frequency marketing emails.
   • Jane decided to set the volume threshold to level 5 to block medium to high frequency marketing emails.
2. Adjusting the simulation sender quality threshold:

• Jane finds that the Simulation Sender Quality Threshold slider is set to 50.
• She knows that any sender whose simulated sender quality threshold is below 50 is likely an unwanted sender.
• Jane decides to keep the threshold at 50 to allow only the desired bulk senders and clicks Simulate.

• As Jane adjusts the slider, the list of allowed and blocked callers updates in real time.

• Reviewing the information helps Jane make an informed decision about whether to move the BCL level to 5 and what potential False Positives and False Negatives could occur based on actual user preferences and interactions.
• Jane then whitelists potential FPs if the BCL level is more stringent, and adds potential FNs if the administrator wants to relax the bulk settings.

By following these steps, Jane can effectively manage her email senders, allowing only trusted and relevant emails and blocking unwanted and potentially harmful emails.

In this example, Bulk Sender Insights helps administrators make data-driven decisions about their bulk email policies. By simulating changes in BCL and simulated sender quality, you can identify and mitigate potential issues such as FPs and FNs to ensure your organization’s email communications are efficient and aligned with user preferences.

This tool not only simplifies email management, but also enforces policies based on real-time insights, improving overall email security and user satisfaction.

conclusion

Striking the right balance in bulk email management is not simply about setting policies, but understanding user preferences and adjusting policies accordingly. With Bulk Senders Insight, we are committed to helping businesses navigate this complexity effectively.

Learn more:

For more information, please visit: https://learn.microsoft.com/defender-office-365/anti-spam-bulk-senders-insight