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Bounces t-online.de


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Hi there - we experience huge problems with bounces to all @t-online.de address (which is Germany’s biggest online provider, hence a big problem for as as Germany is our key market). Essentially all e-mails to @t-online.de bounce for several months already, and we now have several thousand suppressed profiles because of that.

I contacted Klaviyo several times and they always say they will look into it (and trying one more time now), however the problem persists.

Does anyone have any advice on how to best address this? Is this something Klaviyo needs to fix (i.e. is Klaviyo getting blocked), or is our domain the problem? Note we just started to set up our own domain in Klaviyo (have added DNS accordingly), but no results yet.

Also does anyone know how I can un-suppress the profiles in bulk?

Thanks for the help, any advice highly appreciated!

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Best answer by chloe.strange 29 October 2021, 22:42

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37 replies

Userlevel 5
Badge +28

Hi @chris141331 and @superoelk,

Thank you for surfacing your concerns and @chris141331 for sharing your workaround with the community. 

We understand that this situation has been challenging and a point of frustration for many, and we appreciate you sharing your feedback and concerns. This issue continues to persist across the industry. @francis.baker shared the steps that we are taking as an organization to improve this experience:

Hey everyone! 

 

My name is Francis, I am a Deliverability and Compliance technical specialist here at Klaviyo. I wanted to follow-up on this thread and provide some more information. 

Klaviyo is actively looking into joining CSA. The CSA application is extensive, and before we can meet all the standards and requirements, they have we need to do some technical changes. We are actively working on these technical changes, as well as working with CSA.

T-Online is currently not listed as a member of CSA, so yes, the CSA Certification has great benefit. We currently have no evidence, that it will assist with making inbox placement at T-Online easier. Here is a list of all ESP’s and MBP’s that currently take advantage of the CSA Certificate. https://certified-senders.org/participants/

We understand, how difficult this situation is, and we are all feeling it in the industry. Klaviyo is actively working on ways to make this better and smoother. Deliverability has always been a top priority and will continue to be.

 

Best,

Francis 

 

We'll be closing this thread at this time as we do not have any updates to share. If there is an update to share we will be sure to reopen the topic for visibility. Again, we appreciate your patience and are actively exploring the best strategy for moving this forward.

Best,

Chloe

Userlevel 1
Badge +4

@superoelk agree! How do you exclude t-online clients from getting any mails from klaviyo in the meantime? How do you get suppressed back to live other than manually?

If you chose to go back, you‘d better test the “old” provider before. I had campaign monitor deliver for us since 2009. In August 2021 was the last successfull (already a workarund) campaign. Yesterday 497 / 500 mails bounced with campaign monitor, too.

A nightmare, @francis.baker and @chloe.strange - and no solution!

 

Badge +2

@chris141331 Thank you for sharing your workaround. I don’t know if this local program can be a fit for us, we currently have about 3.000 t-online clients. We could also switch back to our former mailing software. But we really don’t want to work in 2 different mailing systems and creating every campaign multiple times.

 

Klaviyo has to finally solve this.

 

Unfortunately, we currently don’t have any other workaround. Customers are constantly calling and asking us, why they don’t receive our newsletter and our opt-in mail. And there’s nothing else for it but to ask them to use another e-mail-address 🙈

Userlevel 1
Badge +4

@Fliegenglas@Erik@Roland@superoelk  et al - a temporary work around for campaigns could be a local serial mailer program:

  • I bought serial mailer 8 for 40 EUR on mac
  • I imported my 500 t-online clients
  • t-online postmaster said I could send 500 mails withouth damaging my reputation
  • be aware of your sender limits of your email account, both per hour / per day (which I found out by “testing” them :fearful:  now have to get into nitty gritty details of email account seettings, yey!)

Whats your plan of action for both, a workaound and a solution?

 

Userlevel 1
Badge +4

@francis.baker Any update on a solution?

@chloe.strange Any update on a workaround in the meantime?

 

What can I do? What are you guys really up to?

 

Off the Top of My Head I have tow  feature requests:

  • soft suppress: “suppress temporarily in all campaigns and flows”
  • auto refund: automatically refund us poor little SMAs for money not made and the time extra spent

I could cry.

Badge +1

Hey everyone! 

 

My name is Francis, I am a Deliverability and Compliance technical specialist here at Klaviyo. I wanted to follow-up on this thread and provide some more information. 

Klaviyo is actively looking into joining CSA. The CSA application is extensive, and before we can meet all the standards and requirements, they have we need to do some technical changes. We are actively working on these technical changes, as well as working with CSA.

T-Online is currently not listed as a member of CSA, so yes, the CSA Certification has great benefit. We currently have no evidence, that it will assist with making inbox placement at T-Online easier. Here is a list of all ESP’s and MBP’s that currently take advantage of the CSA Certificate. https://certified-senders.org/participants/

We understand, how difficult this situation is, and we are all feeling it in the industry. Klaviyo is actively working on ways to make this better and smoother. Deliverability has always been a top priority and will continue to be.

 

Best,

Francis 

Badge +1

Same issue here… I have just send the first newsletter and all t-online.de addresses got bounced.

It would be good, if Klaviyo could warn users about such addresses, as there is little we can do to prevent these bounces without knowing the issue beforehand.

By the way: t-online.de addresses are very popular in Germany, unfortunately.

Userlevel 5
Badge +28

Hi @Erik,

We hear you and are taking action.  We will attempt again to work with T-online to get the Shared IPs unblocked.  We have been turned away in the past because they are shared IPs and not Dedicated with custom PTR Records.  However, the responses we have seen recently to customers shows that they may have lightened up on this stance.  We will update you as soon as we learn more.  Thank you very much for your continued understanding in this matter.

Thanks again, 

Chloe

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Hello to all,

nice that the discussion is so intense again.

The more I read, the more annoyed I became. Because the problem has now become a medium disaster. Problems don't get smaller if you ignore them!

I do not understand that this post were marked as solved. The opposite is the case!

I was asked by Klaviyo to set up a dedicated sending domain, which I did 2 months ago. 
Statement was that Klaviyo will approach T-Online in my name afterwards.

Until today I did not get an answer despite several contacts with the support.
The bouncerate of the mails to t-online has therefore not improved.

 

The solution with a dedicated sending IP is not feasible for the majority of Klaviyo customers. 
What does the Klaviyo team plan to do to solve the problem?

 

Roland

Badge +2

New answer from the t-online postmaster:

The problem is, that Klaviyo uses a lot of IPs from different network areas. We already released some IPs from Klaviyo but that’s why we need to know about which IPs exactly we are talking.

 

Please, dear Klaviyo, contact the t-online postmaster and tell them from which IPs you are sending our mails.

Badge +2

I got another answer from the t-online postmaster. They told me that Klaviyo has to contact them.

Badge +2

And another completely-standard answer not answering my questions at all...

 

 (Klaviyo D&C) 

Aug 5, 2021, 3:37 PM EDT 

Hi there,

Because we use a range of rotating IPs, we are unable to share, as it would not be accurate or feasible to provide the range to our users.

T-online has recently instituted some unique requirements that are needed of a sender to ensure inbox placement. You can read about these requirements in our guide on the topic here. These have impacted the entire email sending industry and are not specific to Klaviyo.

The bounce reason will differ in the IP address that was used for that specific send, but the bounces are:
554 IP=149.72.148.48 - A problem occurred. (Ask your postmaster for help or to contact tosa@rx.t-online.de to clarify.)

--with differing IPs, as mentioned.

If your account is unable to meet these requirements at this time, we would recommend creating a segment using a condition like the one below and excluding the said segments from your campaign sends. This will prevent profiles having a series of bounces on their timeline which in turn will make sure that they are not suppressed for email sending in the future.

?name=image+%288%29.png

Do let us know if we can help with anything else in the meantime!

Best,
​ 

Badge +3

Hi there,

 

I had the same problem. We were asked for the following information.

We still need the IP address of the sending system. With over 4 billion IPv4 addresses, we can't start checking on the off chance.
In case of blocking an IP address for mail delivery to us, our mail system gives the following error message:
   554 IP=$SENDER-IP - A problem occurred.
Instead of $SENDER-IP, the error message naturally contains the real IP address of the blocked system.To help you quickly, we need this error message.


Anyway, t-online told me that Klaviyo should contact t-online directly with this IP address.

The error message is addressed to you as the sender of the mail, because the sender should receive a so-called bounce mail (undeliverable message) from the mail server which contains this error message. However, it states that the sender should contact his own postmaster(*) - alternatively his IT helpdesk - who will, if necessary, contact us, also in English, in order to clarify the cause of the problem.

(*) You can usually reach your postmaster in the domain from which you received the e-mail with the error message.
Sorry for this inconvenience, but we need to establish a direct contact person responsible for the listed server, as only such a person can solve the problem.
We thank you for your understanding!

 

We could not solve the problem by this, because we use a shared IP address and it seems that they are basically blocked by t-online. If anyone finds a solution, I would be very grateful if it is shared here or written to me directly, as we currently do not reach several thousand contacts.

 

Cheers, Erik

(italic texts are answers from t-online)

Badge +2

Hello @david.to,

thank you for your answer.

I understand that you use several IPs, but why can’t I get an original bounce message?

T-online postmaster is willing to help but I just can’t give them the information they need.

We started using Klaviyo because we want the best possible email deliverability - the result is that 10% of our list cannot be contacted anymore. (Which was no problem before with our legacy system.)

Please just get our mails delivered to t-online.de!

Thank you,
Matteo

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hello @superoelk,

We’re sorry to hear about the experience you’ve encountered with t-online.de and working with our Support teams. 

Klaviyo does not publicly disclose its sending IP or IP ranges for security purposes. In addition, Klaviyo also has a multitude of sending IP that are rotated frequently, making it infeasible to provide. 

I’ve also reached out to you via a direct message to gather some further information from you regarding your experience and this topic. 

Thanks!

David

Badge +2

Hi all,

we have been facing the same problem for several months and still have no solution.

The t-online.de postmaster asks us for:

- Wie lautet die IP-Nummer des Mailservers von welchem die E-Mails

versendet werden sollten?

- Zu welchen Zeitpunkten wurden einzuliefernde E-Mails durch unsere

Server abgelehnt?

- Haben Sie ggf. eine Meldung unserer Server erhalten und wie ist deren

genauer Wortlaut, bzw. können Sie uns mit etwaigen Auszügen aus

Protokolldateien oder einem Muster unterstützen?

Unfortunately, I do not get neither an original bounce message nor the sending IP addresses from Klaviyo. I asked for it several times but the support just doesn’t give it to me.

Does anyone know a sending IP or the sending IP range of Klaviyo? Or does anyone know how to get an original bounce message?

Furthermore, as @FIRE-FOOD, I also need to un-suppress several thousand profiles. Klaviyo support did not answer this question either, unfortunately the Klaviyo email support is really not helpful because they are just sending standard answers over and over without answering my actual questions.

I’m thankful for any hint. :-)

Best regards,
Matteo

Badge +5

Hi All, 

Having previously worked for a MarTech business before setting up my Agency that had clients in Germany, Klaviyo are correct in what they are saying in terms of dedicated IPs helping, good list hygiene etc. 

However it would be really useful if at a ‘global’ level (rather than individual client level) if Klaviyo was to engage with the CSA Main Page - Certified Senders Alliance : Certified Senders Alliance (certified-senders.org) 

 

 

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hey @captsirk,

The requirement of using a dedicated sending IP was dictated by T-Online. 

I would suggest reaching out to T-Online to see if they have any available solutions they can provide. Although I do not have any experience reaching out to them myself, from other Community members, it appears that they at have a quick response time to inquiries. If they were able to point you in the right direction, I’m sure the other Community members who are following along would love to hear their suggestion as well!

Thanks for being a Klaviyo Community Member!

David

Badge +1

Hi there, we are facing the same problems with t-online as every german klaviyo user. 

As i understand we need a dedicated IP. But we don’t sent enough mails to receive one from klaviyo. Is there anything else we can do which is not already mentioned in the above thread?

 

Does anyone had luck contaction t-online, are they helpful?

 

Best

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hello @Erik,

I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing this issue surrounding @t-online emails bouncing and thank you for sharing it with the Community!

I would first recommend taking a look into the Meeting the T-online.de Inbox Placement Requirements article provided by @cassy.lee within this thread. Our team was able to gather more information from T-Online which has outlined their inbox placement requirement below:

  • You must use a dedicated sending IP and have enough consistent volume to keep the IP warm
  • Enable double opt-in for your lists
  • Your Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), Reverse DNS (rDNS; i.e., your domain for dedicated IP), and your sender email domains in Klaviyo (the from-address for each email send) must all align

Additionally, I would recommend reaching out directly to T-Online’s Support Team at postmaster@rx.t-online.de with the specific details of how this has  directly impacted your business, including:

- What sending domain you are using
- # of T-online addresses on file
- Affirm all addresses are double opt-in (DOI is mandatory for delivery at T-online)
- Provide example email addresses that have complained to you about not receiving email
- How many emails do you send each month?
- Include an email header https://mxtoolbox.com/Public/Content/EmailHeaders/

I’ve also reached out to you via a direct message to gather some further information regarding this topic.

Thanks for being a member of the Klaviyo Community and have a great rest of your day!

David

 

Badge +3

Hi there,

we’re facing the same problem. Did you solve the problem by following the mentionted steps in this thread or can you give me any further advice?

Best

Erik

Userlevel 6
Badge +9

Hi @Roland

Thanks for following up with this communication via t-online. I’ve reached out to you via DM to get additional details. 

Thanks, 
-Cass. 

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Hi @cassy.lee,

I contacted postmaster@rx.t-online.de as you suggested. They replied in between 30 minutes:

 

On Tue, 11 May 2021 09:32:42 +0200, you wrote:

>167.89.100.91

The error message is addressed to you as the sender of the mail, because the sender should receive a so-called bounce mail (undeliverable message) from the mail server, which contains this error message.

However, it says that the sender should contact his own postmaster(*) - or alternatively his IT helpdesk - who will, if necessary, contact us in English to clarify the cause of the problem. The e-mail address specified in the error message can also be reached via a mail system that may be blocked by us. 

(*) You can usually reach your postmaster in the domain from which you received
    received the e-mail with the error message. 

Sorry for this inconvenience, but we need to have a direct contact with a person responsible for the listed server, as only such a person can solve the problem. Thank you for your understanding!

 

So, what´s next?

Best regards

Roland


 

Userlevel 6
Badge +9

Hi @flonomao,

Thanks for your follow up, and letting us know the actions you have taken here. It sounds like perhaps instead of a dedicated sending IP, you were able to get a dedicated sending domain. For clarity, a Dedicated Sending Domain uses the root domain of a business, instead of a root domain supplied by Klaviyo. A Dedicated Sending IP address gives you full control of your email sending, so you're fully responsible for the reputation of your own IP.

It’s likely that you were able to establish a Dedicated Sending Domain, but there are other specific requirements needed for a Dedicated Sending IP.

@Roland - you are right that it can be risky to use a Dedicated Sending IP, which is why there are some general guidelines and requirements that restrict access, and there is a defined process for warming that anyone with a Dedicated Sending IP needs to go through. You are correct that if emails from a Dedicated Sending IP have a high bounce rate early on, emails from that Dedicated Sending IP can be marked as spam.

Regarding your question on appropriate sending volume, according to this Sendgrid article:

As a general baseline, you should send at least 50,000 emails per month at least twice per month (for 100,000 emails total) in order to warm up your IP.


We understand that these recent changes implemented by t-online may cause delivery concerns for our customers, and we recognize that not all businesses may meet their requirements for a Dedicated Sending IP. If this is the case for your business, I’d still recommend reaching out to their Support (postmaster@rx.t-online.de) with the specific details of this impact, including:

- What sending domain you are using
- # of T-online addresses on file
- Affirm all addresses are double opt-in (DOI is mandatory for delivery at T-online)
- Provide example email addresses that have complained to you about not receiving email
- How many emails do you send each month?
- Include an email header
https://mxtoolbox.com/Public/Content/EmailHeaders/

I’d also recommend mentioning that you are a small, growing business and that you need to leverage a shared IP as your business continues to grow, because you currently do not have the volume to keep a dedicated IP warm. Unfortunately, that means you are unable to comply with the domain alignment requirements they have recently rolled out.

Thanks so much, 
-Cass. 

Badge +1

Hey @cassy.lee and @Roland

we have implemented a dedicated sending IP and did everything that’s mentioned in the guide but t-online mails still bounce. Not sure if we made a mistake or if it’s simply not doing the trick.

Is it possible to double-check our set-up now from Klaviyo side?

Best

Flo