So apparently their emails are legit and active but they just can’t receive our emails from keap. Any advice is appreciated 
We are facing the same issue. For us it appears to be any emails that are @yahoo or @aol. Does this happen to be the same for you?
Yes. We were made aware of it the other day by a customer with a netscape.net address. AOL runs those. Initially we thought it was just one person. Received another complaint today. Decided to run a contact query with email containing aol.com. EVERY ONE of them bouncing since around 10/15. A couple emails have been delivered in the past couple of days but otherwise just a big block of orange in the email history of all customers with aol.com addresses.
We had the first customer to report it contact AOL. They basically said they can’t look any more into because of COVID staffing issue. (I’m so sick of hearing that.)
So, I’m not sure what we do. We have over 5,000 customers with aol.com addresses.
Just discovered this is affecting Yahoo and Verizon accounts as well.
Chatted with supported today. Went through the basic questions trying to assess if it’s our content. Provided them. These are functional product messages. We do our marketing through another platform for the very reason of not risking “polluting” the IP address.
At the end I asked if this is affecting other clients. Support person responded affirmatively.
Apparently this has been going on for a while.
It started for us on 10/14/21 though we just figured it out on 10/28/21.
Others are affected: https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/qfwszx/anyone_use_keap_infusionsoft_for_email_marketing/
I’m not confident there will be a solution any time soon.
Best just prepare for refunds and chargebacks.
Anyone know if we can request a dedicated IP or at least get moved to a different block?
Hi @Jana_Ho1 ,
Here is the information obtained via a conversation with Keap tech support two weeks ago. They were straightforward and forthcoming with what is going on.
Big Five – Rate Limiting / All Senders
- Yahoo
- AOL
- Microsoft
- Apple
The big five email providers have decided to email rate limit all mass marketing emails from ANY large sender of mass emails:
- Constant Contact
- Active Campaign
- Keap
- Every one else in the mass email business
Reduce & Prevent Spam
The idea is to reduce & prevent spam and mass marketing emails being received by all their users. This is not necessarily based on blacklists anymore, for company sending domains (yourdomain.com) but a decision by the big five companies themselves to institute a new policy on any mass marketing emails.
Apparently Yahoo was the first to try this and saw a massive reduction in mass marketing/spam emails, so now the other companies are copying their successful policy.
Broadcast Size – How Many is Too Many?
Only single emails will most almost certainly be allowed through without rate limiting is the advice given. Everything else in terms of numbers of email sent is uncertain about delivery rate limiting. It all depends on the receiving mail server policies set, which are outside the control of Keap.
Broadcast Time Spread
A mass marketing email sent from Keap for a domain (yourdomain.com) is watched for over a 12 hour period by Yahoo. Meaning if you send two broadcasts within 12 hours they are added up in terms of size, when assessing if they are a mass marketing email broadcast or not, so rate limited.
What the watch time frames are for the other companies is unknown, they won’t tell Keap.
Rate Limiting – What This Means
Depending on the policy of each company, this could mean significant delay in delivery or even non-delivery of emails.
Non-Keap Provided Information
The following section gives some mail server research, that I came across while researching deliverability issues myself and was not provided by Keap (just to be clear).
If the first send of emails via a campaign is blocked by the receiving mail server, through suspicion of a mass spam email broadcast, then the receiving mail server may request the sending mail server to send the (broadcast) emails again. This means the first send of emails may never be delivered (black holed, not ever appearing in junk/bulk for the client mailbox)
The apparent idea here is if the sending mail server was a mass spam source they most likely would not try sending again. Whereas a legitimate mail server will try sending again (up to a certain number of times / over a certain time period). So on the second send attempt the email may get through. Getting through still doesn’t mean the email won’t be classified as junk/bulk but at least the client will receive the email somewhere.
Yahoo & Keap
Keap has a working relationship with Yahoo, meaning they are willing to talk with Keap about what is going on and why. Keap has tried everything they can to get the rate limiting removed from Yahoo but nothing is working in the light of these new company policies.
Apple
Apparently any Apple email addresses have for a long time had a super strict delivery limitation on mass emails.
Microsoft
Currently Microsoft is implementing the rate limiting in a light way but will almost certainly implement more fully soon is the understanding of Keap tech support.
Google also appears to be implementing a similar rate limiting policy, as evidenced by the 12 hour delay personally we recently saw in our own campaign email deliveries but this is not known for certain by Keap.
What We Can Do
Again these are non-Keap offered ideas that I came up with (just to be clear).
Time broadcasts to be sent 12-24 hours ahead of when they will need to be received, even if this now means the email will appear further down in someone’s inbox on the day of class. We offer live time sensitive classes in our business model.
Test how much delivery delay is made by each of the big five providers to figure out the lead times needed for broadcasts. Ask for feedback from cooperative customers with some test sends. Keep in mind that maddingly, sometimes deliveries go through without rate limiting and sometimes they are rate limited and you have no way to know, which fate any particular broadcast is going to receive.
Final sales emails on the day now likely will not be effective, in that they will reach the recipients too late, most likely the day after class starts. Again test and see what is happening for real.
Increase the strictness of our domain DNS SPF record, right now we have it set as loose, we can up it to strict. Apple apparently likes to see strict settings on domain email related records, when considering whether to deliver emails or not.
Domain reputations (blacklisting) are likely still a factor under your control but even a “clean” domain can be rate limited by these universally applied rate limiting policies. If your emails are sent by a service that mass distributes emails (legitimate or not) these rate limiting policies may apply regardless.
Send individual, class related emails from our non Keap personal email accounts (non-mass emailing mail servers), for Zoom links. I am thinking CC may or may not work. You would have to test if CC on 20 people will bump you into the mass marketing bracket, given that the sending mail server domain may or may not already be placed on the big five companies rate limiting policy. Test and find out.
Keap Legal Responsibility
Keap has a legal responsibility to only attempt the delivery of email for up to 24 hours. If unsuccessful they must stop delivery attempts.
Note: I cannot give certainty or assurance on how accurate this information is, only this is what was given to me and that I found out through researching the issue outside of Keap’s advice.
Aly
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We’re facing the same thing. Was there a notification? We just noticed the bounced emails and it was recommended that we go with MailChimp until the situation is resolved. I’m wondering if billing will be adjusted accordingly.
Thank you for the info. With regards to having SPF set to strict, I believe that Infusionsoft emails will bounce as the return path won’t match the sending URL?
Hi @Christi_Milligan ,
The information gleaned was from a phone conversation with Keap tech support, there was no official notification of which I am aware. I was discussing mail delivery delay (or non-delivery) problems we were seeing from our broadcasts and campaign automation emails being sent to twenty or so class attendees and asking various questions about the underlying causes.
The back and forth conversation brought to light the information shared, then I did my own mail server delivery research to add to what Keap advised.
As regards to going with MailChimp or any other bulk mail sender, I cannot speak to that point. The logic to my mind says, if the big five companies receiving emails have put in place a blanket policy for ALL BULK MAIL SENDERS then switching companies won’t make a difference.
Truthfully I am in the dark and apparently only Yahoo is willing to explain to Keap what is going on but not the other four providers. So how do Keap or any of ourselves actually know, other than experiencing the symptoms of delayed or non mail delivery, what their blanket delivery (mail rate limiting) policies actually are?
I can’t advise you on MailChimp or any other bulk sender other than you can try and see what results you get.
Aly
I am currently testing. I have the record “v=spf1 include:infusionmail.com ~all” to allow Infusionsoft email but am waiting on a weekly report to see if it actually passes.
This was my last report:
Update on Yahoo deliverability. When a prospect signs up with a Yahoo email address and clicks the confirm link, that is the last time we can send email to them. Yahoo seems to allow that very first email through then black holes nearly all email delivery.
We tested sending a simple email to groups of four Yahoo email addresses who had recently signed up for a free offer via a website hosted Keap/Infusionsoft coded form. NONE OF THEM got the follow up email.
Right now our only option is to update our signup forms to advise people signing up for their free thing, to use another email address other than Yahoo.
Deliverability with Yahoo appears to be near zero at this point.
Aly
Hi @Tony_Ryder ,
Thanks for those test results, see my post on near zero Yahoo deliverability at this point, even to groups of four email address, right after they signup up.
Yahoo is a black hole for Keap deliverability at this point.
Aly
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Hi Everyone,
Here is the latest update from Keap received via email. It states that there will be no further throttling.
A broadcast from our company yesterday, still showed bounces on Yahoo addresses. These Yahoo addresses had very recently opted into our list. As Keap states other deliverability factors may be at play but we have meticulous in our list hygiene, removing any Yahoo address that hasn’t recently double opted in.
Just some feedback on deliverability to Yahoo. I can’t speak to the throttling being removed but bouncing is still definitely happening. Maybe it is our company’s reputation I can’t say for sure but maybe it isn’t. It certainly is not due to an unclean, non-recent list.
Aly
Yahoo/AOL Email Rate Limiting
Broadcast
Submit report
Issue Number: 2505632
Issue Status: In Progress
Date Reported:
08/12/2021
Estimated Resolution Date: 12/4/2021
Summary:
Update - Friday - 11/26/2021: Since our last update we wanted to share some promising statistics regarding our progress with Yahoo! and Black Friday communications. We have been monitoring outbound emails and there has been no further throttling from Yahoo! A massive increase in deliverability has resulted in over 99% of emails being sent out across providers since midnight. Email content, personal domain reputation, and recent engagement is still a factor in deliverability. In order to maintain our positive reputation, we are delivering emails to contacts that have engaged in the last 120 days. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review their sending practices and list hygiene. This has helped immensely as we have worked to improve our standing with Yahoo!. Maintaining and improving our reputation is paramount in keeping our deliverability rates trending upward. Keap will continue to monitor Yahoo’s acceptance delivery rates and provide resources for its users. Our next update will be Tuesday 12/30.