Major email deliverability issues

[Dan_Stevens_]

We’ve been noticing over the past several months that our email performance is extremely poor.  In fact, I’m having doubts that our emails are even making it to our recipients’ inboxes (even though they are being marked as delivered in Marketo).  I decided to give Litmus a try and found that our Postini score (the server-side spam filter that many large corporations use) was a dismal .51953 (out of 100)!  This leads me to believe that many Postini servers are flagging Marketo email as spam.  Are others experiencing issues like this (if your audiences consists of large corporations)?  Does Marketo run tests on their shared servers to ensure companies like us aren’t negatively impacted by other customers who may indeed be sending spam?
 

[Geoff_Krajeski1]

I would first check with Marketo Support and their Deliverability team.

Do you have a dedicated IP, or shared with other Marketo clients?

If it is not a dedicated IP, you run the risk of someone else on the cluster causing issues like this.

You can also check out services that will alert you as to red flags / blacklisting such as GetMeInTheInbox.com

It provides reports such as this one below:

IP Reputation

GMITI Score

199.###.###.###: Diamond

Sender Score:

199.###.###.###:

Score: 97

Risk: Low

Complaint Status: Low

Message Filtered: Low

Sender Rejected: Low

Unknown Users: Low

TrustedSource

199.###.###.###: Low threat level

SenderBase

199.###.###.###: Unknown

ReputationAuthority

199.###.###.###:

Reputation: Neutral

Clean: 54%

Viruses: 0%

Spam: 21.5%

Malformed Messages: 0%

Suspicious: 24.5%

Trustwave

199.###.###.###: Good

Cyren

199.###.###.###: No Risk

Sophos

199.###.###.###: Good Reputation

Webroot

199.###.###.###: Trustworthy

Mailspike

199.###.###.###: No Blocks Found

AOL

199.###.###.###: Good

IP Blocks

Office 365

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Cloudmark

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Symantec

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Trend Micro

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Barracuda

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

AppRiver SpamLab

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Comcast

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Gmail

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Yahoo

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Road Runner

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

EarthLink

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

SurGATE

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Web.com

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Register.com

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Network Solutons

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Sonicwall

199.###.###.###: Not Blocked

Domain Reputation

TrustedSource

e.mydomain.com: Low threat level

e.mydomain.ca: Low threat level

promotions.mydomain.com: Low threat level

promotions.mydomain.ca: Low threat level

Webroot

e.mydomain.com: Trustworthy

e.mydomain.ca: Trustworthy

promotions.mydomain.com: Trustworthy

promotions.mydomain.ca: Trustworthy

Web of Trust

e.mydomain.com: Excellent

e.mydomain.ca: Excellent

promotions.mydomain.com: Excellent

promotions.mydomain.ca: Excellent

Domain Blocks

Barracuda

e.mydomain.com: Not Blocked

e.mydomain.ca: Not Blocked

promotions.mydomain.com: Not Blocked

promotions.mydomain.ca: Not Blocked

General Notes

199.###.###.###: This IP shows a high amount of inbox placement today as reported on ReputationAuthority and displays a positive email reputation on all sites. Over the past 30 days, this IP has hit 2597 spam traps.

[Josh_Hill13]

can you look at your recent hard bounced list and Email Bounced or Invalid Reason? Might also show some detail.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi all,

we recently also had some issues with some email sent from IP 185.28.196.15, which is still blacklisted as we speak:

@ Kiersti Esparza​,

Would you have any feedback on this ? Is there any policy and/or recommendation from Marketo on this ?

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Marketo has us on their trusted IP range of shared addresses.  When entering all five of those IP addresses, they are all blacklisted on DRMX and SPAMCANNIBAL.  Does anyone know if these two spam blockers are prevalent in B2B organizations?

[Ari_Echt1]

Hi Dan,

We've had a significant drop in email open rates cut in half for exact same sender name and subject line. Been doing a lot of digging but haven't been able to pin it to anything definitive.

Just curious if you discovered anything else in your investigation?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Ari, unfortunately, no.  We continue to have very poor email performance - even against our existing accounts. 

[Anonymous]

Are you on a Marketo Shared IP address or a dedicated one?  If you are on a shared address then it is pretty much a guarantee that one of these in a day will be marked on one or more blacklists (RBL) - it happens ALOT.

We noticed exactly the same issue and I dug deep into this and this is what I found/know:

If your instance sends via a server which has been blacklisted (for recipient servers who respect and use this mechanism) it will send the emails it can and any emails which do are blocked are marked as Email Suspended = True.  A blacklist block is actually a softbounce but Marketo marks and sees it as a hard bounce this is owing to the fact the it is in the system as a hardbounce code "Category 1 – spam block" (Email Suspended=true (for 24 hours)).

The Email Suspended flag that I can see does not get reset after 24 hours -  and I am trying to work out if its a bug or by design (I assume the former or I am missing some data to check / know) Update: Marketo will never update this status - it is a product defect/fact of life.  The engineering required to change this status is too great.

If an IP address is listed on one day, the next campaign will send from a non-listed IP where possible. Note: the where possible - it is possible that your next server selection is actually also blacklisted and you need to wait until the selection process chooses a server which is not blacklisted.

RBL - delisting is done automatically by (some) anti –spam providers and normally completed between 24 and 48 hours. During the phase of delisting, the IP address will not be used in any mail campaign by those instances hosted on the POD that utilises the range.

The following IP addresess are, from what I can see are the worst offenders:

199.15.214.200 (em-sj-00.mktomail.com)

199.15.214.199 (em-sj-99.mktomail.com)

>> Does Marketo run tests on their shared servers to ensure companies like us aren't negatively impacted by other customers...

Not that I know of no.

As of today thsi is what I know of the IP ranges in use in San Jose and London

IP	Blacklisted	# of times	Region	RBLs
199.15.215.77	Yes	5	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, OSPAM, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.215.78	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.79	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.80	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.81	Yes	4	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.215.82	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.202	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.201	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.200	Yes	2	NA (San Jose)	DRMX, NoSolicitado
199.15.214.199	Yes	2	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.45	Yes	2	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.46	Yes	4	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, ZapBL
199.15.214.47	Yes	4	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, ZapBL
199.15.214.48	Yes	1	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado
199.15.214.49	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.214.50	Yes	3	NA (San Jose)	NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
185.28.196.15	Yes	6	EMEA (London)	CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS, NoSolicitado, SORBS SPAM, UCEPROTECTL1
94.236.119.58	Yes	5	EMEA (London)	CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS, NoSolicitado, SORBS SPAM
38.188.97.188	No	0	EMEA (London) (US based)
94.236.119.5	Yes	3	EMEA (London)	CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS

[SanfordWhiteman]

Nice post.  I don't think this piece is true, though:

During the phase of delisting, the IP address will not be used in any mail campaign by those instances hosted on the POD that utilises the range.

When recipient servers are permfailing based on a blacklist that has an aging process, Marketo doesn't disable sending from the blacklisted IP automatically, as far as I know.  Getting the timing right would be all but impossible anyway.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Yep - here's a screen capture:

[Josh_Hill13]

are you sure that it is .51 and not 51?
http://www.emailonacid.com/blog/details/C13/emailology_how_to_please_postini