Microsoft recently released an updated version of Hotmail.

The main objective of this new release (aside from trying to gain market share from rivals Yahoo and Gmail) is to “address inbox clutter”.

Essentially, Microsoft has taken the position that although an email may not be spam, that doesn’t mean all messages are created equal.

Microsoft is trying to divide email using special filtered views that would allow you to see emails from your contacts, emails from social networks, email from company newsletters, etc, etc. They actually coined the term “graymail” to refer to email that is not spam, but also isn’t the top reading priority.

George Bilbrey wrote an excellent summary on Media Post that can be seen here. This post goes into more detail about the various changes and new features.

The key take away for marketers (aside from making sure your authentication is setup properly, which all Elite Email customers have by default) is to really focus on engagement. The goal isn’t just to get into the inbox, but rather have your email opened with some form of interaction.

This update also breaks away from the traditional model where the last message to reach a recipients’ inbox is displayed at the top. Now, with the Hotmail filters, emails are prioritized in different ways.