Service Alert: Microsoft Email Delivery Delays — November 12-13, 2026

Microsoft is currently experiencing a widespread outage affecting Outlook, Exchange Online, and other Microsoft 365 services. As a result, emails sent to recipients using these services may be delayed until Microsoft resolves the issue.

If your mailing list includes a significant number of Microsoft email users, you may notice temporarily lower open and click rates while deliveries are delayed.

There is no need to resend your campaign. Direct Mail will automatically retry temporarily delayed deliveries until Microsoft's servers are accepting mail again. No action is required on your part.

For updates, visit Microsoft's Service Status page or Microsoft 365 Status on X. We'll also update this notice as more information becomes available.

Help Documentation 〉Old Versions of Direct Mail 〉Autoresponders 〉

Manually triggering an autoresponder

This help article is for an old version of Direct Mail.

Autoresponders are designed to be triggered automatically based on the rules that you set (e.g. trigger an email when someone subscribes to my mailing list). However, there may be times when it is useful to manually trigger an autoresponder to send to one of your recipients. For example, let's say that you set up a series of weekly emails that are triggered when someone signs up to your list using a subscribe form. If you have a friend who wants to join your list but did not fill out the subscribe form, you can add them manually to your list in Direct Mail. Since the autoresponder was not triggered automatically (because they did not fill out the subscribe form), you can trigger it manually to get them started on the series of emails.

To manually trigger an autoresponder email to one or more of your recipients:

  1. In the Addresses tab, select the recipient(s) you want to receive the autoresponder email
  2. Choose Addresses > Trigger Autoresponder from the menu bar at the top of your screen
  3. Select the autoresponder you want to trigger
  4. Click OK

Within a few minutes, if you consult the autoresponder's campaign report, you should see that the recipient(s) you selected have received your autoresponder email.

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