Declutter and Defend: Reducing promotional mail noise with Microsoft Defender

Microsoft

Apr 22, 2026

Enterprise inboxes are overwhelmed with graymail — legitimate, bulk email like newsletters, vendor promotions, and product updates that isn't malicious but buries the messages that matter. When high volumes of these mails land in the inbox, it crowds out priority communications and can dull security vigilance. Employees conditioned to ignore repetitive emails may miss signs of a real threat. It also creates recurring work for admins and security teams who must continuously tune filters, manage exception requests, and chase noise from user reports for email that isn’t malicious. Because graymail passes every spam filter check, traditional defenses don't separate it — leaving this signal-to-noise gap unaddressed.

Today we’re excited to announce that Microsoft Defender now includes built-in graymail filtering. It is delivered natively through a new Promotions experience in Outlook that automatically classifies and separates bulk email, so it no longer competes with business-critical communication in the inbox. Now in Public Preview, this capability learns from how users interact with graymail to become more accurate over time. Coupled with the existing Bulk Senders Insight report, Defender brings data-driven bulk classification and control into the security workflows you already use.

What Is Graymail?

Graymail is legitimate bulk email that isn't malicious—product newsletters, event announcements, marketing promotions, and software update notifications from reputable, authenticated senders. It is distinct from spam and from phishing - graymail comes from real organizations with proper authentication and traditional spam filters aren't designed to handle it.

Graymail handling in Microsoft Defender

Microsoft Defender's approach is built on three principles: classify intelligently, deliver natively, and learn continuously.

Promotions Folder — Intelligent Inbox Organization

A dedicated Promotions folder, natively provisioned in Outlook, now keeps legitimate bulk mail out of the primary inbox. Promotional content is separated from priority emails without being sent to Junk, which means users can still access and browse newsletters and updates at their own pace. The folder appears at the top level of the mailbox for easy discovery and is visible across all Outlook experiences.

Non-spam bulk mail below the organization's configured Bulk Complaint Level threshold is automatically routed to the Promotions folder.
Messages from senders the user has explicitly allowed continue to land in the Inbox.
Messages identified as spam continue to go to Junk.

To enable the Promotions folder administrators need to enable the "Bulk Moves Enabled" setting in their anti-spam policy. The Promotions folder is then created for all users and used for routing only when this setting is ON.

Existing mail flow is unaffected.

Figure 1: system tagging of “Promotions” in outlook client and promotions folder (previously tagged as “Bulk” in private and public preview)

Promotional mail tagging and Mailbox Rule Support

Messages classified as graymail will automatically be labeled with a "Promotions" system tag in Outlook. The tag provides instant visual context without requiring users to open each message and is visible in Outlook on the Web and the native Outlook desktop apps for Windows and Mac. During Public Preview, the tagging component is opt-in, requiring administrators to enable it by configuring an Exchange Transport Rule. Once generally available, it will be enabled by default.

Because this classification is integrated at the client level, the Promotions tag can also be used as a condition in Outlook mailbox rules. This enables custom routing logic for advanced scenarios like moving all promotions-tagged messages from a specific sender to a custom folder, flagging certain promotional emails for follow-up, or auto-forwarding or deleting promotions that meet specific criteria. This transforms the Promotions classification from a one-way filter into a flexible building block for personal and organizational workflows—particularly valuable for power users and teams with compliance or archival requirements.

Figure 2: User inbox rules using “Promotion” tag (previously “Bulk” in private and public preview)

Adaptive Learning

Microsoft Defender's graymail filtering gets smarter with every interaction. The system learns directly from how users handle their mail. When a user moves a message out of the Promotions folder and back to the Inbox, future emails from that sender will no longer be placed in the Promotions folder. When a user moves a message from the Inbox into the Promotions folder, future emails from that sender will be routed to the Promotions folder automatically.

This creates a personalized, self-improving experience that becomes more accurate over time - no manual rule configuration required, no safe-sender lists to maintain, and no filtering rules for IT teams to manage on behalf of individual employees.

Built into existing Security Workflows

Administrators also gain visibility through the Bulk Senders Insight report, which provides data-driven guidance on what your organization actually receives and can help tune your bulk mail filtering.

Graymail has long been the unsolved middle ground of email security—too legitimate to block, too noisy to ignore. Microsoft Defender now handles it where it should be handled: inside the platform, inside the mailbox, and inside the security workflows your organization already relies on. No new portals, no new vendors, no compromise between security and user experience.