diff --git a/openstack_releases/cmds/mail.py b/openstack_releases/cmds/mail.py
index ab1cd0684b..433e905be2 100644
--- a/openstack_releases/cmds/mail.py
+++ b/openstack_releases/cmds/mail.py
@@ -22,6 +22,8 @@ import argparse
 import email
 import smtplib
 
+import tenacity
+
 
 def main():
     parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
@@ -47,9 +49,14 @@ def main():
         msg = email.message_from_file(f)
 
     tolist = [address.strip() for address in msg['to'].split(",")]
+    send_email(server, msg, tolist, user=user, pw=pw, debug=args.verbose)
 
-    server = smtplib.SMTP(server)
-    if args.verbose:
+
+@tenacity.retry(wait=tenacity.wait_exponential,
+                stop=tenacity.stop_after_attempt(4))
+def send_email(smtp_server, msg, tolist, user=None, pw=None, debug=False):
+    server = smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server)
+    if debug:
         server.set_debuglevel(True)
     try:
         if pw:
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 4da04a7a53..baf80dc7ee 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ jsonschema>=2.6.0
 twine>=1.13.0
 wheel>=0.34.2
 ruamel.yaml>=0.15
+tenacity>=6.1.0
 
 # For release notes generation.
 Jinja2>=2.6  # BSD License (3 clause)