How does Apple Relay affect email sender reputation and what causes suspected spam temp fails?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from GlockApps notes that with Apple Relay, the IP reputation of Apple's servers can affect deliverability and suggests monitoring your campaigns for deliverability issues specific to Apple domains. Even if your own IP reputation is good, problems with Apple's infrastructure could lead to deliverability challenges.
Email marketer from Litmus suggests using a variety of engagement metrics beyond open rates to gauge campaign performance in light of Apple's MPP. They advise tracking click-through rates, website visits, and conversions to understand how recipients are truly interacting with your emails.
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that temporary failures can be caused by a number of reasons, including server overload at the recipient, blacklisting of the sender IP, or content-related issues that trigger spam filters. Analyzing bounce codes can help identify the specific reason for the temp fail.
Email marketer from Reddit shares in a thread that Apple Relay can skew open rates, making it difficult to assess genuine engagement. They suggest focusing on click-through rates and conversion metrics to get a more accurate picture of campaign performance. They have also seen increased bounces from relay addresses.
Email marketer from GMass explains that factors impacting sender reputation include spam complaints, bounce rates, and engagement metrics (opens, clicks). Maintaining a clean email list, sending relevant content, and authenticating emails (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) are crucial for maintaining a positive reputation.
Email marketer from Neil Patel Digital shares that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which includes Hide My Email (Apple Relay), can indirectly affect sender reputation. While it doesn't directly cause bounces, it can lead to inaccurate open rates, impacting how engaged your audience appears, which in turn can affect reputation with ISPs.
Email marketer from EmailOctopus explains that Apple's Hide My Email service can lead to deliverability challenges. While it protects user privacy, it can also obscure real engagement data, making it harder to optimize email campaigns and maintain a healthy sender reputation. They recommend focusing on other engagement metrics like click-through rates and conversions.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that to investigate tempfails you should check the logs to see how much mail was deferred and the message there and they likely accepted it eventually.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains the importance of actively monitoring sender reputation using tools like Google Postmaster Tools and SendGrid's Reputation Dashboard. Monitoring helps identify potential issues, such as spam complaints or blacklisting, which can negatively impact deliverability.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks answers that Apple Relay has almost no impact on sender reputation as Apple transforms the message, re-signs it, and changes the from address.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that temporary failures or temp fails can occur due to greylisting, a technique used by some mail servers to mitigate spam. Greylisting temporarily rejects emails from unknown senders, requiring the sending server to retry delivery. If the sending server is legitimate, it will retry, and the email will eventually be delivered. Illegitimate servers may not retry, thus reducing spam.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that DKIM, SPF, and DMARC have nothing to do with whether a message is marked as spam or not.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that if the temp fail happened before DATA in the SMTP transaction it's not content related but if it happened after DATA it may be content related.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that temporary bounces can arise from various factors, including issues with the recipient's mail server (e.g., server overload), temporary network problems, or suspicion of spam. These are transient issues, and retrying the email delivery at a later time might be successful. Also lists a number of potential SMTP error codes that can be the cause.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from SparkPost explains that temporary failures (temp fails) can occur for various reasons, including greylisting (temporary rejection to combat spam), temporary server issues at the recipient's end, or suspected spam content. It is important to monitor these failures to identify patterns and address potential issues.
Documentation from RFC 5321 explains that SMTP servers use temporary failure codes (4xx) to indicate that a message could not be delivered at the time but might be deliverable in the future. These failures can be due to temporary network issues, server overload, or other transient problems.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that a high spam complaint rate significantly impacts sender reputation. Google actively monitors spam complaints and uses them to filter unwanted emails. Senders should aim for a low spam complaint rate by ensuring recipients have explicitly opted in to receive emails and that emails are relevant and valuable.
Documentation from Microsoft explains that email delays or failures (including temp fails) can be due to several reasons: server issues, network problems, high email volume, or spam filtering. Senders should ensure their email infrastructure is properly configured and that they adhere to email best practices to avoid being flagged as spam.