What causes Office365 temp fails and how can they be resolved?
Summary
What email marketers say7Marketer opinions
Email marketer from SocketLabs stresses the importance of maintaining clean and engaged email lists. Sending to invalid or unengaged email addresses can negatively impact sender reputation, contributing to temporary failures. Regularly cleaning your lists helps improve deliverability.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that temp fails may be resolved by ensuring your sending infrastructure has a valid reverse DNS (rDNS) record, checking your IP address's reputation, and making sure your sending volume is consistent.
Email marketer from EasyDMARC answers that temporary failures can be caused by reputation issues. They recommend monitoring your sender reputation through tools like Google Postmaster Tools and ensuring proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
Email marketer from MXToolbox suggests that temporary failures may occur if the sending IP address or domain is listed on a real-time blacklist (RBL). They recommend checking your blacklist status using their online tools and taking steps to delist if necessary.
Email marketer from Email Vendor Guide recommends gradually warming up new IP addresses to establish a positive sending reputation. This involves starting with low sending volumes and gradually increasing them over time, which can prevent being flagged for spam.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that correctly configuring email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is critical for avoiding temporary failures. Proper authentication helps Office 365 verify the sender's legitimacy, improving deliverability.
Email marketer from StackOverflow answers that temp fails may be due to exceeding sending limits imposed by Office 365. They advise reviewing Microsoft's documentation for sending limits and adjusting sending behavior to comply.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks shares that server busy is not usually a block in her experience.
Expert from Word to the Wise (Laura Atkins) explains that greylisting, a common anti-spam technique, can cause temporary failures. Receiving servers temporarily reject emails from unknown senders, requiring the sending server to retry delivery. If retries succeed, the email is accepted.
Expert from Spam Resource emphasizes the significance of sender reputation. A poor sender reputation, based on factors like spam complaints and sending to invalid addresses, can lead to temporary failures as receiving servers become wary of accepting mail from those sources.
Expert from Email Geeks thinks that the error is throttling by exchange online protection and that the explicit sending IP suggests it is not system resources.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that if it’s just one customer experiencing the issue to look at what they’re doing, but if it’s multiple it could just be Microsoft having a bad day.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft Learn outlines troubleshooting steps for email delivery issues, mentioning that tempfails can indicate a transient problem. It suggests checking the service health dashboard for known outages and verifying the sender's reputation.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn explains that temporary failures (tempfails) can be caused by various issues, including service outages, network congestion, or filtering problems. It indicates that retrying the email after a delay is a common solution.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn details that Exchange Online uses throttling to manage resources and maintain reliability. Temporary failures can occur when sending limits are exceeded, necessitating a cool-down period or adjustments to sending patterns.