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I have sent out a survey to 150 participants with the same domain, let's say for example it is: @example.com. These have been correctly received by these 150 recipients and some of them had filled it in already. I could see that all 150 of them have opened this first invitation.

A few weeks ago, I sent a reminder to the 136 participants that had not completed it. These e-mails were also sent correctly according to the system. However, it surprised me that only about 25 of them opened the e-mail according to the distribution list, while the previous time all 150 of them opened it.

Now I've just sent another reminder to 126 participants who have not completed it, and I get the message that 114 of the e-mails (!) had not been sent successfully. When downloading the distribution details, I see the following details:

“host or domain name not found. name service error for name=example.com type=mx: host not found  try again”

I have no clue what is causing this. I am 100% certain that the domain is still working, as this is also my work e-mail address. Weirdly enough, 12 of the 126 with the same domain apparently did get the e-mail.

Any advice on how to solve this?

I guess not important, but the only thing that I changed between the first distribution and now is that I added the participants first and last name to my directory and used that as piped text to personally address them.

Very odd.. modifying first or last name fields in the directory shouldn’t affect the ability for them to receive a reminder email.

Have you tried this scenario independently with a dummy survey? 

I have tried to add myself to the address book and first send out the e-mail only to my own e-mail address with the first and last name string - that worked fine! I also see ‘soft bounce, x-postfix’ in the distribution details. Does this indicate that the problem is on the receiving end of the organisation who gets the e-mails, not part of my settings?

I have tried to add myself to the address book and first send out the e-mail only to my own e-mail address with the first and last name string - that worked fine! I also see ‘soft bounce, x-postfix’ in the distribution details. Does this indicate that the problem is on the receiving end of the organisation who gets the e-mails, not part of my settings?

Yes, soft bounce means the issue in on the receiving end. Most likely there has been some change to the domain’s email system.

I have tried to add myself to the address book and first send out the e-mail only to my own e-mail address with the first and last name string - that worked fine! I also see ‘soft bounce, x-postfix’ in the distribution details. Does this indicate that the problem is on the receiving end of the organisation who gets the e-mails, not part of my settings?

It sounds like there may be some rules on the receiving domain that protect against spam. It might pay to log a ticket with the IT team that look after that and they can perform an analysis for you. 

You can find additional info about that topic here: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/distributions-module/email-distribution/email-distribution-management/#MonitoringEmailDistributions

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