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Included in this article Overview Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Hard Bounces Soft Bounces Bounce Details Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields 2. Create a Program to house everything 3. Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details Overview Bounce activities carry details for why the email was bounced, but it’s housed within the activity log entry, not in a field on the lead record, so it’s difficult to export that data. This article will show you how to extract that information to create a directory of leads bouncing emails and how to make the list automatically update. This will also create counters for bounces and successful re-deliveries after bounces happen. Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Email bounces come in different types depending on why the email was bounced; Hard Bounces or Soft Bounces. Hard Bounces Hard Bounces come in two types, Category 1 and Category 2. Category 1 bounces are emails that have been marked as spam by the recipient mail server. Many email servers monitor blacklists or spam traps, so after de-listing with them, leads that have had a Category 1 bounce previously may be able to receive emails again. Category 2 bounces occur due to an email address that is invalid or doesn’t exist. Soft Bounces Soft Bounces come in three different types, Categories 3, 4 or 9. Category 3 bounces are usually temporary, caused by full mailboxes, timeouts, or throttling. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 4 bounces are caused by technical problems, Transient Failures, Admin Failures, DNS Failures. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 9 bounces are unknown, undetermined or gibberish details. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Bounce Details When an email is bounced, the recipient mail server includes details of why it was bounced. These are created by the admin of the recipient mail server and vary greatly, but most will give some explanation that can give valuable information. Email Bounce Codes Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields You’ll need 6 custom fields, two DateTime fields, two Score fields, and two String fields Name the DateTime fields “Bounce Date” and “Email Delivered After Bounce”. Name the Score fields “Email Bounces” and “Deliveries After Bounces” Name the String fields “Email Bounce Details” and “Email Bounce Category” Directions for creating Custom Fields can be found here: Create a Custom Field in Marketo 2. Create a Program to house everything Use a default program type and name it "Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails". Info on creating programs can be found here: Create a Program 3. Create a Static List This static list will be your actual directory that contains all of the leads that are currently bouncing emails. Name it "Active Bounce List". Info on creating a static list can be found here: Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns These two Smart Campaigns are what will be used to add and remove leads from your active bounce list. Info on creating Smart Campaigns can be found here: Create a New Smart Campaign Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Your first Smart Campaign will be used to listen for any email bounces that occur. The campaign will populate the “Bounce Date”, “Email Bounce Category” and “Email Bounce Details” fields. It will then add one point to the “Email Bounces” score field which can be used to count how many bounces have occurred per lead. Lastly, the campaign will add the lead to the static list which will be an active directory of leads who are bouncing emails. Campaign Smart List Use the two triggers of “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft” in the Smart List. Set both triggers to “is any” so that they will fire whenever any email bounces for any reason. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 5 flow steps. The flow will use a System Token and some Trigger Tokens, which can be used to pull details out of the action that activated the trigger. In this case, the Trigger Tokens will be pulling out the details on why the emails were bounced. That info is in the bounce message and is logged in the lead's activity log. Normally you'd have to comb through the activity log one at a time to find these details for each individual lead. This method, however, will pull the details out automatically for all leads. Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Bounce Date” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Data Value. Attribute: “Email Bounce Category” New Value: {{trigger.category}} Flow Step 3: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Bounce Details” New Value: {{trigger.details}} Flow Step 4: Change Score Score Name: “Email Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 5: Add to List List Name: “Active Bounce List” Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries Campaign Smart List The Smart List of the campaign will need a trigger for “Email is Delivered” set to “is any” and also a filter of “Member of List” looking just for leads that belong to your Static List. This way, the campaign will only apply to leads who have had an email bounce but have then had an email successfully delivered afterwards. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 3 flow steps to do the following; log when the email was delivered, add a point to the "Deliveries After Bounce" Score Field, and remove the lead from the "Active Bounce List". Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Delivered After Bounce” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Score Score Name: “Deliveries After Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 3: Remove from List List Name: Operational.Active Bounce List 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details The custom fields you’ve created for email bounce information won’t show automatically in the view of your list. You can create a new view of the list to show just this information so that when it is exported it will give you only the email bounce information you need. Once the list has the necessary details, it can be exported with those columns included so that you can work with it. You can identify emerging trends and issues with your deliverability by looking for common themes among the bounce details. Directions for creating Custom Views can be found here

Issue A recent Smart Campaign or Email Program sent Person records in Marketo more emails than should be allowed based on settings in Communication Limit Settings in the Admin area of Marketo. Solution This is commonly caused by one of three things: The emails that sent after the communication limit was hit were Operational. To verify if this is the case, select the email asset from the menu tree on the left and review the summary of the asset in the canvas where you will see if the email is Operational or not. The Block non-operational emails checkbox is not checked in Edit Communication Limit Settings. Setting values the "Per Day" and "Per 7 Days" dropdown menus does not enforce the communication limit. In order for this limit to be enforced, the "Block non-operational emails" checkbox must be checked. Enable Communication Limits The Email Program or Smart Campaign are not set up to follow Communication Limits. Apply Communication Limits to Smart Campaign Enable/Disable Communication Limits in an Email Program

Issue An email was expected to sent out on a specific cast of Nurture Program but a specific lead or couple of records did not receive it. Environment Marketo>Engagement Program Solution There are a number of steps to begin troubleshooting this query and here is a flowchart how to proceed. 1). Check if engagement program is turned on from its setup up. Also check if at the time of email cast, the program status was on (this can be checked from Admin>Audit Trial) 2). Check if the email asset which was expected to send was present in the Nurture Stream at the time of cast. Also check if that email asset was activated (having green arrow). Both of these can be checked from Audit trail where you will find the log of "Add Email" and "Activate Email" along with its date/time. 3). Check if the lead is present in that specific stream using the smart list filter "Member of Engagement Program > Stream = <required stream>" 4). In the same smart list, use filter of "Engagement Program Cadence Changed" and set "New Value = Paused" and see if that lead qualifies it or not. A paused cadence would mean the lead has been temporarily restricted to move in the flow of nurture stream and hence will not received any email content. 5). Most important step- Go to the activity log of lead and search for the engagement program's name in the quick find bar. Look for all logs along with their dates when the lead performed any activity related to that engagement program like added to program, changed cadence, removed from program, etc. 6). In continuation of step 5, check in the activity log if the lead was added to engagement program in less than 25 hours before the next cast by looking at the time of log "Added to Engagement Program". This is because as per the doc, the lead must be added atleast 25 hours before the cast to abide by the recipient time zones otherwise it will skip that current cast and will qualify for the next cast. Schedule Engagement Programs with Recipient Time Zone | Adobe Marketo Engage 7). In continuation to step 5, check if the lead was moved to a different stream via getting qualified into transition rules. Transition rules are present in stream of those engagement programs that have more than one stream and are used to move leads from one stream to another. Transition People Between Engagement Streams | Adobe Marketo Engage 8). Check if the lead is unsubscribed, email invalid, email suspended (this one is only valid for 24 hours), marketing suspended or block listed because any of these 5 conditions would block the lead from receiving any communication from any of the Marketo's program or campaign. 9). Check if the record has hit the communication limit. Go to Admin>Communication limit and see what we currently have setup. If limit is 2 emails per day, then create smart list "Was sent email>Email Is ANY> Minimum Number of times 2" and see if lead qualifies in it. Alternatively you can go into lead's activity log and manually count number of "Send Email" logs in last 24 hours and in last 7 days and match it with the communication limit of Admin tab. Using programs as stream content: We can also use programs (default and event) in nurture stream instead of direct email assets. 10). In case of using a program, the email can be sent out to the required audience only if that program have a smart campaign with filter "Member of Engagement Program>Name of Program" and flowstep of "Send Email". So make sure the smart campaign has these configurations. (Make sure the campaign has to be a batch campaign and not trigger) 11). If above pointer is true still record is not present in the result tab of the campaign, then check all steps from step 1- step 9. If nothing is found then check if smart list has more than just "Member of Engagement Program" filter and if the lead is failing to qualify any of the other filter. 12). Check in the schedule tab if qualification rules says "Each Lead can qualify only once". If yes then go to campaign member tab and search if lead is already a member, if yes then lead will not qualify again and this is why email was not sent. 13). Check if flowstep has a wait step and the lead is stuck there because wait step does not create any log in the results tab. People in waitstep can be checked from dashboard of the smart campaign. 14). For any other possible reason why the lead did not qualify the smart campaign, you can look for the knowledge base "Lead not qualifying smart campaign- Universal Checklist" under heading of Batch Campaign: marketo.my.salesforce.com/articles/en_US/Article/Lead-not-qualiying-smart-campaign-Universal-Checklist?popup=true 15). If all above pointers have been checked still unable to figure out why the email was not sent on a specific cast, escalate the case to Tier 2.

Summary Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure Issue This flow step choice type causes a campaign failure because it is not supported. This is expected behavior. Solution Customers have to use Member of Smart List as indirection for the desired filter condition. i.e. Create a new Smart List with the "Deleted from SFDC" filter. Then change this failing flow step choice to use 'Member of Smart List' with the Smart List just created. Example flow step:

Issue You are using choices within flow steps with parameters such as "Member of Program" and the lead is qualifying for the choice when they are not part of the program. Solution When using a flow step for a campaign, you have the option of adding "choices" to the flow step so different leads can have different interactions. When using a choice parameter such as "Member of Engagement Program" or "Program Status". If the lead has been part of ANY engagement program, or has EVER had a program status equal to the parameter (i.e program status is email > sent), then the lead will qualify for that step. To prevent outside leads from being pulled in, use the "Member of Program" filter in your campaign Smart List to make sure content is delivered to your intended audience.

Issue Issue Description Getting 'Communication Failure' error popup repeatedly when doing normal operations within the application. Solution Issue Resolution: - Disable all browser extensions especially any dealing with ad blockers as they seem to be the primary cause of this issue ("Ghostery" is an example of extension known for blocking multiple Marketo operations/ tasks). - Try to repeat same operations after you have cleaned cache and cookies - (If above option does not work) Try to repeat same operations while using a incognito browser window.

Issue Issue Description An email has been added to multiple streams within the same nurture program, for example stream 1 and stream 2. Would a lead that received the email in stream 1 receive the same email from stream 2? Solution Issue Resolution No, Engagement Program will still apply the rule of not sending the same email to leads more than once as long as the email ID in stream 2 is the same from stream 1.

Issue How to identify in which campaign the "Delete Person" flow step is used. Solution You can identify it by going to "Campaign Inspector" in Marketing Activities. From there you can filter down by type of Smart Campaign and search "Delete Person" and the resulting list will be Smart Campaigns containing that flow step. If you do not see the Campaign Inspector, contact Marketo Support to have it enabled.

Issue You need to revert a data value change for a field on multiple leads. Solution There is no way through the UI to "undo" a data value change (unless it was a boolean field, in which case there are only two possible values.) You can certainly use a Smart List to identify whose values have changed, but there no way to go back to the old value (unless it's stored elsewhere in another field or through another data store, along with the API). However, you can use the API to extract the data value change activity from the activity log, which would include the old and new values, extract the original values, then use the API to rewrite the old values back to the lead record. http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/activities/#data_value_changes

Issue A lead met the trigger criteria but failed to trigger a Smart Campaign Solution When a trigger campaign Smart List contains both triggers and filters, the filters criteria must be satisfied before or at the exact moment the trigger fires. To determine whether this is the case for a particular lead: Look at the Smart List to determine what filter criteria need to be satisfied. Open the lead's activity history and see when the activity occurred that should have triggered the campaign. Go through the lead's activity history and determine when the values were set for each of the filter criteria. If one of the values was set after the trigger fired, the lead would not have qualified in time to go through the Smart Campaign.

Issue A lead shows as being a member of a campaign that had a single flow step of 'Change Data Value'. However, the lead doesn't show in the Results tab of the campaign, nor is the CDV activity logged in the activity log for the lead. Solution This can happen if the field to be updated was blank/null, and the new value in the CDV flow step is derived from another field, using a token, and this other field is also blank. Because the value 'changes' from blank to blank, we don't log anything in the activity log, but the lead is a member of the campaign.

Issue Leads that qualify for a Smart Campaign run through the flow with a Change Data Value flow step, but some leads don't have a data value changed, while other flow steps still apply. It seems that those leads have just skipped the Change Data Value step and went right on to the next flow step. Solution If the new value for the Change Data Value is exactly the same as the current value in the lead record, Marketo will skip that flow step. There won't be an activity entry in the activity log or results tab because the action did not actually happen. Example Say you had a field called Favorite Sport and a lead that already has the value of "Football" in that field on their record. The flow step is Change Data Value: Attribute: Favorite Sport New Value: Football In this example, a lead will run that through flow step, but since the value did not change Marketo will just move on to the next flow step.

Issue How do the links (both Marketo and Non-Marketo) populate in the dropdown of Visited Web Page trigger or filter? Solution The drop-down shows a limited number of options. These links are fetched from any of your leads' activity logs. The values in the dropdown of the "Visited Web Page" will show if there is any lead who visited a webpage and this webpage or link is stored in the activity log of the email (may be in past). If the expected webpage doesn't show up in the dropdown list, first try typing it in and letting the autocomplete offer the URL. If you type it in and it still doesn't show as an option, then none of the leads have visited that page at least once. You can create a test lead for yourself and visit the desired webpage to get this added in the dropdown.

Issue A Program or Smart Campaign was deleted and you would like to have it restored. Solution Marketo Support cannot restore deleted programs or campaigns. Marketo Support can only restore deleted leads, emails, and landing pages within a certain amount of time after deletion. Landing pages and emails that are assets of a deleted program cannot be restored. Marketo Support can provide the smart campaign configuration, including details such as filters in the smart list and flow steps. It's essential, however, that the deleted campaign is relatively recent, ideally within the last 2 weeks.

Issue My token is not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email. Environment If customers manually type a {{my.token}} and use uppercase M such as {{My.token}}, then the view as webpage version of email may not render that token as expected. The feature to HTML encode lead tokens (source of external data) for security reasons, applies to my tokens that incorrectly use uppercase M. HTML Encode Tokens Solution Use the token picker to pick the correct lowercase {{my.token}}.

If the user makes changes to the my tokens, snippets, etc during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will those changes be reflected—No If someone unsubscribes during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will they receive the email—Yes Can you cancel a head start program once the processing of the an email that is using head start has begun—Yes What happens to the processing data when someone cancels a program during the processing of the an email that is using head start—It is deleted (I.e. Program membership, etc.)

Issue You have a custom landing page template and are able to see that landing page is not rendering perfectly on the editor but works as expected when published. Solution As you are facing the issue on a custom template, we suggest you to follow the below steps. Download a template form the URL- https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/landing-page-templates/guided-landing-page-template-list.html In Marketo, navigate to the Design Studio Click Landing Pages in the left-hand tree, then select Templates. In the menu bar, click Import Template. Choose the downloaded file, enter a template name, then click Import (make sure to pick a descriptive name and indicate that editing mode is Guided). Create a new Landing page with the recently downloaded template without making any changes. If the default background image works on this landing page as expected, it confirms that the issue lies with the custom coding that was added to the template. Marketo Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting custom code. The best point of contact will be your web developer who should be able to resolve the issue for you. Please be aware that the landing page editor may not load all external resources in the editor or previewer, which can cause them to look different than the published version. If the background image doesn’t render on this newly downloaded template as well, contact support and we will assist in troubleshooting your issue.

Issue You receive the "Subject is empty" error when attempting to approve an email which contains an emoji character in the subject line, and elsewhere in the email, emojis may fail to render. Solution Marketo can render any Unicode character up to 5.2 and any ASCII character, but this does not encompass emojis. The Marketo email editor will strip out any unsupported symbols. This is because we cannot guarantee the consistency of their appearance across platforms, as not all clients can render all emoji. Marketo only supports the text symbols that are generally then converted into emoji's by the recipient client or operating system. The basic symbols in a list such as https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols should work, as they are ASCII characters and not reliant on extra encoding. These are a set of accepted text symbols that will universally work on all clients and many will convert them to emoji. Just highlight the symbol from https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols, copy and paste it into your email. Alternately, you can work around this by q-encoding the emoji in UTF-8 format, which will render a string of code to add to your subject line. This code tells the email client to render the desired emoji. All you need to do is copy your desired emoji and run it through a Unicode to UTF-8 translation tool, such as https://onlinetools.com/unicode/convert-unicode-to-utf8. As an example, say you want to send a Happy Birthday email to a lead. You could copy the (birthday cake) emoji and run it through a translator to yield the code "=?utf-8?Q?=F0=9F=8E=82?=" Entering this code in your subject line without the quotation marks will render the emoji on the client's end, and render it in the design most compatible with their device/browser. With any email design, it's always important to test before a live send to confirm it appears the way that you expect it to.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Email Sent to Leads Who Have Exceeded Their Communication Limit

Engagement Program not shooting email

Flashing Clock Icon on Batch Campaign

Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure

Flow Step Choices Qualifying Leads who are Members of Other Programs

Getting Repeated 'Communication Failure' Errors

Having the Same Email within Multiple Streams in a Nurture Program

How to Create a Custom Interesting Moment Type

How to Identify Where the “Delete Person” Flow Step Is Used

How to Revert Data Value Changes

Lead Does Not Trigger Smart Campaign

Lead went through CDV flow step but it's not logged in the activity log

Leads Skipping Change Data Value Flow Steps

Links/URL Showing in Visited Web Page Trigger Drop-Down

Need Deleted Program or Smart Campaign Restored

My token not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email.

Head Start feature Q&A

Tokens Not Populating in ICS (Calendar) File When Sending Sample Email

Troubleshooting Background Image Not Being Rendered on Landing Page Editor

Using Emojis in Marketo Emails