diff --git a/builder/kojid b/builder/kojid
index 7504da9f..b0f031db 100755
--- a/builder/kojid
+++ b/builder/kojid
@@ -4934,9 +4934,12 @@ Status: %(status)s\r
         message = self.message_templ % locals()
         # ensure message is in UTF-8
         message = koji.fixEncoding(message)
-
+        # binary for python3
+        if six.PY3:
+            message = message.encode('utf8')
         server = smtplib.SMTP(self.options.smtphost)
         #server.set_debuglevel(True)
+
         server.sendmail(from_addr, recipients, message)
         server.quit()
 
@@ -5143,7 +5146,9 @@ Build Info: %(weburl)s/buildinfo?buildID=%(build_id)i\r
         message = self.message_templ % locals()
         # ensure message is in UTF-8
         message = koji.fixEncoding(message)
-
+        # binary for python3
+        if six.PY3:
+            message = message.encode('utf8')
         server = smtplib.SMTP(self.options.smtphost)
         # server.set_debuglevel(True)
         server.sendmail(from_addr, recipients, message)
diff --git a/tests/test_builder/test_build_notification.py b/tests/test_builder/test_build_notification.py
index 24ee44c5..a9056e4f 100644
--- a/tests/test_builder/test_build_notification.py
+++ b/tests/test_builder/test_build_notification.py
@@ -1,19 +1,24 @@
 from __future__ import absolute_import
+
 import json
 import locale
-import mock
 import os
 import tempfile
-try:
-    import unittest2 as unittest
-except ImportError:
-    import unittest
 import time
 
+import mock
+import six
+
 import koji
 import koji.util
 from .loadkojid import kojid
 
+try:
+    import unittest2 as unittest
+except ImportError:
+    import unittest
+
+
 
 class MyClientSession(koji.ClientSession):
 
@@ -103,7 +108,8 @@ class TestBuildNotification(unittest.TestCase):
         self.assertEqual(recipients, ["user@example.com"])
         fn = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'data/calls', 'build_notif_1', 'message.txt')
         with open(fn, 'rb') as fp:
-            msg_expect = fp.read().decode()
+            msg_expect = fp.read()
+        if six.PY2:
+            msg_expect = msg_expect.decode()
         self.assertEqual(message, msg_expect)
-
         locale.resetlocale()