diff --git a/CHANGES.rst b/CHANGES.rst
index ed11621..1291030 100644
--- a/CHANGES.rst
+++ b/CHANGES.rst
@@ -4,7 +4,8 @@ Changelog for Isso
 0.9.7 (unreleased)
 ------------------
 
-- Nothing changed yet.
+- fix SMTP authentication using CRAM-MD5 (incorrect usage of
+  `smtplib`), #126
 
 
 0.9.6 (2014-08-18)
diff --git a/isso/ext/notifications.py b/isso/ext/notifications.py
index cdddcea..46663bc 100644
--- a/isso/ext/notifications.py
+++ b/isso/ext/notifications.py
@@ -66,8 +66,8 @@ class SMTP(object):
             self.client.starttls();
 
         if self.conf.get('username') and self.conf.get('password'):
-            self.client.login(self.conf.get('username'),
-                              self.conf.get('password'))
+            self.client.login(self.conf.get('username').encode('ascii', errors='ignore'),
+                              self.conf.get('password').encode('ascii', errors='ignore'))
 
         return self.client