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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 Clicking a tracked link in an email either leads to a 404 page or the fallback page. Environment Tracked links Tokens Specific Characters: "#", "$", unbalanced brackets "{" or "}" Solution Do not use the following characters "#", "$", unbalanced brackets "{" or "}" in a link that is tracked when using a token as well. For example: www.google.com/ebook-download.html?ebook={{lead.ebook}}# This will not work and will either direct to a 404 page or redirect to fallback page. When hovering over the link you will see that it is not a normal tokenized link, it will contain something along the lines of: $mktEncrypt.encrypt($mkturl2)/<random characters> Root Cause When using tokens in the url of a tracked link, the email is processed and the tokens are substituted and populated with the correct information. The engine that assembles this information have some characters reserved for use such as #.

Issue Issue Description When validating the HTML of a template, you receive an error of 'Error: Nested Editable Element: ...' with the id of the element following causing you to not be able to approve the template. Solution Issue Resolution This is due to having an element with a 'mkto...' class nested inside another element with a 'mkto...' class. Below is an example: <div class="mktEditable"> <div class="mktEditable"></div> </div> You will need to remove the 'mkto...' class reference from one of the elements to be able to pass validation and approve the draft as in the corrected example below: <div class="mktEditable"> <div class="newClassName"></div> </div>

Issue Updating an Email Template is creating a draft for existing emails without the desired changes Solution When changes are made to an Email Template in the Design Studio that is already in use and those changes are approved, it will create a Draft for any existing Email that was created from that Template. If the draft is not reflecting changes you would like to see made, you may have included the changes within a mktEditable or Editable class <div> tag. The content within a mktEditable class element within an email template are ignored from any changes as they are considered to be "default content". Any content within these elements will not see any changes made to them based on changes to the template, and will only be seen when creating a new Email asset. You can update an editable section to remove it's editable status, however this will remove any changes to the content done in any email. You can see which elements can be classified as Editable here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Email+Template+Syntax

Issue The subject line for an email sent out to leads did not match what was set for an approved email. Solution The email may have Dynamic Subject Lines enabled. Dynamic Subject Lines allow you to set dynamic content for the subject line based on the Segmentation of your leads. Visit our Documentation for further information about segments and dynamic content. Segments: Create a segmentation Dynamic Content: Using Dynamic Content in an email The issue can be resolved by converting the subject line to a Static Subject Line. A Static Subject Line is a single line of content that will send out to any recipient of your email, regardless of their segmentation. You can do so by doing the following: Click on the Subject Line to bring up the Subject Line edit buttons. Click the Make Static button

Issue Is there a way to prevent opening a new browser window when a mailto/email address link in an email is clicked? Solution The reason why the link clicked in an email redirects to a new browser window occurs is because the link is a tracked link. As per design of Marketo tracked links, they are required to be loaded in a browser first which is why the mailtolink/email address clicked is loading in the browser first. If you wish to load the link clicked in the same window and not redirect to a new browser window, you will need to disable tracking on the link. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Disable+Tracking+for+an+Email+Link

Issue A landing page is taking a significant time to load. Solution The load time of a landing page is generally due to resources that have a large file size or due to third-party scripts. This can be identified by using tools like https://tools.pingdom.com/ that breaks down the loading time of individual resources and scripts within a landing page. Another way to inspect the loading time of resources and scripts within a landing page is using the network feature of the developer tools in Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or any other web browser: https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/network-performance/reference https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Network_Monitor https://developer.apple.com/safari/tools/

Issue You have multiple domains for your landing page CNAMES and want to choose which one is used for a landing page. Solution First, you will need to make sure your secondary domains are set up with a CNAME and a domain alias. You don't choose a domain when creating the page. All pages are created under the default/original landing page domain, but they're all available from all domain aliases as well. Swapping out the default domain with the domain alias in the URL will take you to the same page. You find more detail on this here - Multiple Domains (CNAMEs) in a Single Marketo Instance

Issue What is the difference between mktNoTrack and mktNoTok? Solution Adding the mktNoTrack class to an email link tells Marketo not to add a tracking link to the URL. Without the tracking link, the recipient is not redirected through the tracking server before going to the target URL. Use this when you specifically don't want to track Clicked Link in Email events in the Marketo database. Adding the mktNoTok class to an email link tells Marketo not to add the _mkt_tok parameter to the target link. Used when the target link does not behave properly, for example, a mailto: link that should not have extraneous URL info or a static file that won't download when there are query parameters. The click activity will still be tracked, but the associated lead info will not be carried onto the page for use in functions such as form prefill.

Issue When you send an email that was cloned from a previous campaign and updated, the sent email shows the old content rather than the new content. Solution This can be caused by Dynamic Content in the email. If you clone an email with Dynamic Content but only update the default content, then the old content will be sent to leads who are not part of the default segmentation. Open the email in the editor and see what email elements are displayed in the Dynamic tab. Check the different segments in the editor and see which ones have the old content. You can update the dynamic content for each segment or simply make the content static, which will make the email use the default content for all leads.

Issue Issue Description "${button-link}" appears on the Email Link Performance report in place of the URL the buttons point to. Solution Issue Resolution To stop this "${button-link}" from appearing on the reports, edit the text version of the emails to replace the "${button-link}" with the URL the button points to. This occurs because the text version of the email didn't get edited to provide a valid button link. The "${button-link}" value is part of HTML templates and if the setting 'Copy HTML to Text version of email' is checked then those values get copied across. From there, if the text version doesn't get edited or reviewed after that copy over happens, tracked links for "http://${button-link}?mkt_tok=..." will be sent out for those leads that get the text version of the email in place of the URL the button points to. The next question after hearing this solution is often, "If this is just for the text version, who is reading the text version of emails?", and the answer is that it's probably automated link scanners or security software visiting the link and triggering the click to show on reports.

Want to gauge how many leads clicked through a link you have in your social media or other outlets? This can be done using URL Parameters at the end of the URLs you use. Basically, you just add a little bit of code to the end of the hyperlinked URL. When leads click through and arrive at your Landing Page, that code can be captured into a hidden Form field. Here’s how to do it. Quick Overview of URL Parameters In the structure of a URL, there are two main parts. The first part is used for navigation, and the second part is used to pass data along. The two parts are separated by a question mark. For example, let’s look at this URL: www.myawesomewebsite.com?URLParameter=ThisIsAParameter The first part of the URL, “www.myawesomewebsite.com” is the main part of the URL used for navigation. The whole rest of the URL from the question mark on, “?URLParameter=ThisIsAParameter” is referred to as a querystring. It isn’t needed for navigation to the page specified, but can be used to pass the extra data you want to include. This is a article attached image The querystring contains the URL Parameters, which are used to push data into the hidden Form fields. In the querystring “?URLParameter=ThisIsAParameter” used here, “URLParameter” corresponds to the name of the parameter you use when designating the value for the hidden Form field, and “ThisIsAParameter” will be the value that is actually entered into that field. You can add additional values into additional other fields by adding those into the format of the URL separated by an ampersand like this: www.myawesomewebsite.com?URLParameter=ThisIsAParameter&URLParameter2=ThisIsValue2&URLParameter3=ThisIsValue3 In this example, you’ve got the same initial value being pushed into the first hidden field, but now two more hidden fields will store the next two values as well. The name of the parameter for the second hidden field would be “URLParameter2” and the value put into it would be “ThisIsValue2”. The third hidden field parameter name would be “URLParameter3” and the value put into this field would be “ThisIsValue3”. This is a article attached image Applying This to Social Media Use So, how does this let you track leads coming from each of your social media sources? Well, in setting up your different promotional channels, when adding the hyperlink, you can customize the URL parameter for each channel so that the values passed will input the information specific to where they came from. The parameter values will change from one social media outlet to the next, but the structure and format will stay the same. Let’s use the social media sources of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as examples. Since you’re looking to identify the source of these leads, you’d likely want to name your parameter as “Source” so that it’s easily identifiable. Using the same base URL, let’s see how you’d structure the URLs. For hyperlinks placed on Twitter: www.myawesomewebsite.com?Source=twitter For hyperlinks placed on LinkedIn: www.myawesomewebsite.com?Source=linkedin For hyperlinks placed on Facebook: www.myawesomewebsite.com?Source=facebook When leads fill out the form on your landing page, the Source field will then tell you exactly where they came from! The best part, this is completely customizable and scalable. You can add more parameters and hidden fields to capture additional information like what campaign it is for. Documentation How to make form fields hidden: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/forms/form-fields/set-a-form-field-as-hidden How to define hidden form field value: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/forms/form-fields/set-a-form-field-as-hidden (Look for the section on URL Parameters in particular) Using the URL builder to generate the URLs you’ll be using: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/personalizing-landing-pages/using-the-url-builder

Setting an email to "operational" does the following No unsubscribe link automatically added Email will be sent to leads set to Unsubscribed Email will be sent to leads set to Marketing Suspended Note - when sending an operational message, Unsubscribed and Marketing Suspended leads will still be included in the "blocked from email" count on the schedule tab of the campaign. When is it OK to use the operational setting? Sending marketing email to unsubscribed addresses is illegal. For this reason, you should be extremely careful to only use this setting in extremely limited circumstances. Using this setting incorrectly violates Marketo's Terms of Service, and most antispam laws. There may be legal consequences for using this setting incorrectly. Good uses of the operational setting fall into two categories: Transactional messages Relationship messages What's a transactional message? A transactional message is part of a transaction that a lead has initiated and you are responding to. Here's some examples of transactional messages: Receipts for purchases Registration confirmations Download links in response to form fill-outs Requested assets (whitepapers, spec sheets, etc.) What's a relationship message? A relationship message describes something that affects your business relationship with the lead. Here's some examples of relationship messages: Downtime notifications Changes to terms of service Recall notices End of service notifications Operational messages should not contain any marketing content at all. In other words, do not use the operational setting to send a message that contains a receipt and a promotion, only a receipt.

With the evolving best practices and awareness around data privacy, Marketo will be upgrading how we handle form pre-fill. What change is being made? Starting April 24, 2019, Marketo will only pre-fill form fields if the URL used to navigate to the Marketo landing page contains a valid mkt_tok URL parameter value (which occurs when users click tracked links in Marketo emails). What that means is, any time a person is viewing a Marketo landing page with a form, the URL being used must contain the mkt_tok token in the query string, otherwise the form on that landing page will not be pre-filled. If the URL in the browser window does have a valid mkt_tok tracking token, then the form within the page will pre-fill as expected with data corresponding to the person record associated with that mkt_tok. Also note that if you are embedding Marketo Landing Pages within other web pages using an <iframe>, the mkt_tok would need to be passed from the parent page to the <iframe> URL if you intend for form prefill to work within the <iframe> How did it work before? Previously, Marketo landing pages would rely on Munchkin tracking cookies to identify known person records, and forms would pre-fill based on that cookie. Form pre-fill did not require being linked to a Marketo landing page from a tracked email link. Why is this changing? This upgrade is being made to provide a more consistent and more secure experience with Marketo’s forms. We have identified that, in the past, people have experienced scenarios where data pre-filled into a form didn’t always correspond with the actual person viewing the page. For example, people using a shared computer or those who may have been cookied incorrectly by clicking through a forwarded email, could end up viewing incorrect data associated with a different person. To provide a more consistent customer experience, and as a security enhancement, Marketo is upgrading the conditions under which the form pre-fill will display known customer information. In short, pre-fill will only work when users clickthrough links in Marketo emails, demonstrating that they have ownership of the email address associated with the known person record. Below is a list of different scenarios and how form pre-fill will work moving forward. Please note, these changes to form pre-fill will not affect any other functionality of Marketo Forms, including the progressive profiling feature. Scenario Will the form pre-fill? Notes Clicking a tracked link in a Marketo email to a Marketo landing page with a form which has pre-fill enabled Yes The email link must have mkt_tok enabled. Links that are not tracked or that have mkt_tok disabled will not work. Navigating directly to a Marketo landing page with a form which has pre-fill enabled No A direct link to the landing page will not have the mkt_tok present in the HTTP request. Refreshing a Marketo landing page with a form which has pre-fill enabled No The mkt_tok is stripped from the URL after Marketo Landing Pages load so refreshing the page will not include the mkt_tok in the URL. As a result, pre-fill will not work. Clicking a link in a sample email to a Marketo landing page with a form which has pre-fill enabled No The sample email will not have a valid mkt_tok attached to the link and so will not pre-fill the form. If you wish to test form pre-fill you will need to use a real email from a Marketo campaign. Navigating to a non-Marketo page that includes an embedded Marketo form which has pre-fill enabled No This behavior does not change with the upgrade. Pre-fill has never been supported for Marketo forms that are embedded on non-Marketo pages. Navigating to a non-Marketo page that includes an <iframe> pointing to a Marketo Landing Page that includes a form with pre-fill enabled With custom implementation The form within the Marketo Landing Page that is being loaded in the <iframe> will pre-fill if the mkt_tok value from the original HTTP request is passed along to the <iframe> URL Visiting a Marketo page with a mkt_tok that is not associated with the same person record as an existing Marketo Munchkin cookie currently stored on the browser No This will prevent the wrong person’s information from being displayed in cases where a computer is shared, or an email with a mkt_tok tracked link is forwarded to another person that may already be cookied as a known person in your database. Copying a Marketo tracked link from an email and sharing/pasting it externally (email, blog, chat, social media post, etc.) that enables another individual to click the tracked link Yes The tracked link in a Marketo email will redirect to a URL with the mkt_tok included, so anyone clicking this link will reach a page and see pre-fill data associated with the known person record from the “to” line of the email.

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.

Issue You have been receiving form submissions that appear to have bogus/nonsensical data in the fields, such as "kjsag@sm4.to" for email address, or "111-111-1111" for phone number, or in a Comment field other random nonsensical text. Solution Currently, there are no default settings in Marketo that prohibit a form submission if the required fields are filled out. A great workaround for addressing these bogus form submissions in Marketo is to implement a 'honeypot' field on the form. To do this, you will need to create a custom Marketo field, string type, and name it something distinctive (such as "spam" or "honeypot"). After creating this field in Marketo Admin > Field Management, place this new field on the form as a hidden field. Real live end-users do not see hidden fields, but spam bots will see them and fill out all available fields. So now when we see form fills with this honeypot field "not empty," we know that it was a bot fillout. Setting up the Honeypot Field Say that you have a Trigger Campaign that's having some issue with these spam/bogus form fills. In the flow of this campaign, you can add a flow step at the top: Remove from Flow, with a Choice. Choice: If Honeypot field Is not empty, then remove from flow Default: do nothing This way, the lead record is removed from the flow. You can also have other campaigns to handle these bogus form fills, such as a daily recurring batch to delete the record. Other Options Another method of dealing with bot fillouts is to enable a reCaptcha. In fact, a very prolific Marketo user has written custom code that you feasibly could use to enable a reCaptcha on the form! Check this out: https://codepen.io/figureone/pen/meybqN?editors=0110

Issue When trying to clone a Form or Landing page from Design Studio to a specific Program under Marketing Activities, there is no list of programs that appear. Solution This is expected behavior. When you don't see a program listed, this is because the number of programs in Marketing Activities actually exceeds what we're able to display at one time. If you start typing into the Program field in the pop-up window, you should start to see programs listed in the drop-down. For example, you enter the name of the particular program, you will get a result.

Summary UTM Parameters Not Populating with Known People Form Fill Issue UTM parameter field values are not being captured for some people's form submissions, even though the form is configured to capture the values. Solution When a form is using the "Show Custom HTML Form for Known People", the submission button will generate a Filled out Form activity, but will not write any new field values. When attempting to capture UTM parameters with the feature enabled, those UTM values, as well as the other fields on that form, will not be captured. Show Custom HTML Form for Known People | Adobe Marketo Engage

Issue When cloning an asset from Design Studio into Marketing Activities, there is a box that asks you to select which program to clone the asset into. When clicking into this box, you may see No Results, even though there are programs within Marketing Activities. This is a article attached image Solution Expected Behavior: This happens when there are too many programs in the Marketing Activities tree. To select your desired Marketing Program, begin typing the Program Name, and results will begin to appear in the Program drop-down. This was designed to increase UI performance when cloning assets into Marketing Activities from Design Studio.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Links in emails not opening correctly when it contains a token and special character #

Receiving 'Error: Nested Editable Element: ...' when editing a template

Email Template Updates Not Reflected in Existing Emails

Subject Line for Sent Emails Different than What Was Approved

Mailto Link Clicked in Email Opening New Browser Window

Landing Page Loading Time Too Long

Moving Design Studio Assets to a New Instance

Using Multiple Landing Page Domains for Your Landing Pages

The Difference Between mktNoTrack and mktNoTok

Cloned Email Showing New Content But Sending Old Content

Email Link Performance Report Shows "${button-link}" Instead of URL

Tracking Lead Sources Using UTM Parameters

Operational Emails - Important Information

Form Pre-Fill Feature Upgrade

Using Emojis in Marketo Emails

Dealing with Spam or Bot Form Fillouts

Unable to Clone form from Design Studio into Marketing Activities

UTM Parameters Not Populating on Form Submission with Show Custom HTML for Known People Enabled

MyToken used in Email not reflecting correctly

No Programs To Select When Cloning Assets From Design Studio To Marketing Activities