Knowledgebase

Featured article

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 Lead activity log shows "Change segment" or "Add to Segment" for a segmentation (i.e. "Change Title to "Directors") The named segmentation ("Title") does not show up in the segmentation list in Database Environment Marketo instance with the Target Account Management feature Solution Even though the activity log shows a segment activity, the segment is actually a Persona, which is a feature of Target Account Management.

Summary Estimating the external storage requirements for your Marketo Engage Database Issue I want to extract all of my data from Marketo Engage and store it. How much storage space will I need? Environment Marketo Engage and External Systems Solution Summary There is no repeatable method to accurately estimate the amount of storage you will need to extract and store your Marketo Engage database. Standing in the way of good estimation is data availability, field selection, and storage method. Any accurate estimate will take into account the potential sizes of each type of data and their quantities (known to data scientists as "facts and dimensions"). Determining ranges for these values takes a lot of preparation and may require a high level of skill. IMPORTANT NOTE: Estimating Database size is hard so any estimate used to make business decisions should be made in cooperation with a database or application architect or other qualified professional. Scope Some information won't be extracted. Information about anonymous leads, for example, cannot be extracted. Some of the data that can be extracted may not be needed at all. Selecting the right data for your needs is the best practice as it reduces the required storage and leads to a more efficient extraction process. Field Definitions How the fields are defined in the target system will affect how big the stored data is. Depending on your storage format, padding may play a role in the size of your extracted database. As an example, the "Country" field in Marketo is a string of up to 255 characters. You could chose to store 255 characters for every country value. Or you may choose a format that uses a variable amount of space. You might also know that the longest country name is "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" meaning that 199 of those characters will always be extra so you truncate the value from Marketo storing the first 56 characters only. Each choice will have an impact on the size of your extracted database. Estimating 199 unnecessary characters per lead and making similar decisions for other fields will add up to increased storage requirements and slower extraction time. Format Once the desired data is identified, the next step is to extract, transform and load (ETL) the data from Marketo Engage into your storage system. The data returned by Marketo's API is plain old text which is usually formatted as JSON or CSV. For the information to be useful, you will transform it from JSON into the format necessary for your storage system. That format could be an Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft SQL database or a schema-agnostic database like Azure Cosmos DB. How the data is formatted and encoded will make a big difference in the amount of storage needed. Take this simple example: a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with "Marketo Engage" in cell A1. I saved that same file in four different formats which resulted in files ranging from 1 KB to 25 KB. The format you store you information in may have a bigger impact on your final storage requirement than the data itself. This is a article attached image To help illustrate the impact of the storage system, take a look at this guide for Microsoft SQL Database size estimation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/databases/estimate-the-size-of-a-database Functionalization Once you've extracted your data, what are you going to do with it? Archiving your data (simply storing it) is easiest and comes with the fewest contraints. A compressed archive (Zip file) will save dramatically on storage space at the cost of functionality and ease of use. Functionalizing your data (using it in an application) requires more: at least better speed and searchability: typically a relational database. An application will often require additional data and that will need to be accounted for too. Facts and Dimensions: Do the Math It's a lot of work to get to this stage. Once you've determined how your extracted data will be stored, you can set upper and lower bounds on the sizes for each object type extracted (lead, email, activity, etc). These are your facts. Then multiply those values by the number of each type of record. These are your dimensions. Add to that the overhead of your target storage system and its functional requirements to generate your final estimates.

Marketo Support's Mission is: To provide fast and friendly world-class support through creative, flexible solutions to empower Marketo Automation Software success. Areas of Responsibility: Technical Support Engineers (TSEs) are your initial point of contact for any technical questions or concerns. TSEs are responsible for troubleshooting issues within your Marketo instance and common include: My Marketo Marketing Activities Design Studio Lead Database Analytics Revenue Explorer (RCA/RCE) Calendar Deliverability Tools Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Web Personalization (RTP) Admin Community Our TSEs are not web developers and as a result they are unable to troubleshoot most types of custom coding (ie. HTML, JavaScript, XML, etc.). Our support team is able to help with the following types of non-custom code: Simple Munchkin Code Asynchronous Munchkin Code Asynchronous jQuery Munchkin Code SOAP API REST API Our TSEs are here to assist you and our support commitment to our customers is to always work towards providing an above and beyond support experience. Note: Our team is not against looking at custom code and, based on the subject matter expertise, our TSEs might be able to offer suggestions and recommendations, but we do want to make it clear that they are not responsible for fixing or updating any custom code that has been implemented. Response Time Our TSEs are bound to responding to your cases and issues within the Service Level Agreements from your account's level of support services. We track response milestones to ensure that your cases are being handled in a timely manner as dictated by our agreed to Service Level Targets.

Issue If a record which is in a Marketo Campaign Wait Step and is merged into another record, does the winner of the merge continue through the flow? Solution Winner of the merge will continue through the Campaign flow and complete the remaining steps. To prevent this behavior, remove the record from Campaign using the 'Remove From Flow' step. Environment Records merged in Marketo Records merged in SFDC

Issue Single Flow Step to send an email to x number of leads failed Solution Create a smart campaign and override the person restriction to send an email to a number of people that is greater than the campaign restriction Root Cause The number of people selected to send an email from a single flow action exceeds the campaign person restriction/limit. The campaign restrictions apply to the single flow action because a background campaign is generally created to process the single flow action. Environment Single Flow Action Send Email Campaign Restrictions Smart List

Issue The activity log is not recording the Open Email activity for an email send. Solution Issue Resolution Email opens are linked to an individual asset. If a record is sent the same email more than once, only the first open activity will be recorded. If you are not seeing opens record for a record, search the activity history to confirm whether or not the asset has been opened previously. Also, Text-Only emails lack the tracking pixel used to determine whether an email is opened, so Text-Only emails will never show opens in the activity log. In Email Performance Reports, Opens will be backfilled by the report's internal logic if the customer clicks a link in the Text-Only email. Otherwise, opens will not be recorded.

Summary duplicate records with the same email across lead partitions can be affected by uploaded custom object activity Issue System not separating lead partitions for custom object imports Uploading custom object activity affects duplicate records across partitions Custom Object activity import writing to the most recently updated record regardless of partition Solution Use the following workaround: Run an update on the records that should be affected by the custom object activities import. This will make sure they are the most recently updated records among the duplicates Root Cause Normally when you do a list import, it would import into the one partition, whatever partition the list is located in and only impact the record in that one instance. But when you import a Custom Object, it's able the see ALL the records across ALL the partitions. If there are duplicate records, it just looks to see which one was updated most recently and grabs that one for the list import. So if you have lead record in A with Add to Custom Object already completed and you re-import again but the lead record in B has been updated more recently and has NOT had the custom object added to it, you get the duplicate "Add to Custom Object" activity. Environment Multiple lead partitions with duplicate records across them Custom Object activity import

Issue Leads recently imported cannot be found Solution Check if the example leads exist in the partition the workspace has access to. It is possible that the leads cannot be found because the workspace being checked does not have access to the partition the leads exist in. Check if any of the example leads have been deleted: by using the Campaign Inspector to review all of the smart campaigns that contain a Delete Lead flow action. Then check the run history of each smart campaign to see which recently ran and how many people qualified. If there is a significant amount of smart campaigns that contain a delete lead flow action, contact Marketo Support for additional assistance. by checking the delete lead activities via API Check if the example leads' information was changed. For example, if a lead was imported with email address "john@gmail.com" then create a smart list using "Data Value Changed" filter where "previous value" was "john@gmail.com" Root Cause Leads could exist in a partition that has not been searched, the details could have changed, or the leads could have been deleted. Environment Lead Database List Import Workspaces and Partitions Smart Campaign Campaign Inspector

Summary Unable to update Person Source as expected for records created with the LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and Facebook Lead Ads integrations. Issue New records created through LinkedIn Lead Gen forms as well as Facebook Lead Ads results in the records not updating the Person Source field as expected. Solution Person Source may be set to block updates to the field as noted in the example for Block Updates to a Field - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation. To resolve the issue ensure the field is not set to block updates for the desired update method. Alternatively the Person Source values populated by the integrations can be kept and expected values can be updated to include these sources. Root Cause The LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and Facebook Lead Ads integrations automatically update the Person Source to preset values when a new record is created in Marketo through the integrations. Blocking field updates to the field may prevent the value from changing to pre-configured values as a value already exist for the integration created records. Environment LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Facebook Lead Ads

Marketo Champions are customers who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the Marketo Community, are experts in Marketo products, are avid contributors in the social world, and are loyal advocates of the Marketo brand. Benefits and perks our Champions receive include: Access: Meetings with our product and marketing teams to give exclusive feedback Previews: Given early previews to products, features, and releases when available Publicity: Exclusive speaking opportunities at our annual Marketo Summit and other events Networking: Special networking events with Marketo executives and fellow Champions and semi-annual conference calls Ownership: Ownership of content and exclusive activities at our annual Marketo Summit that showcase your expertise and thought leadership Credibility: Special Champion badge on Marketo Community profiles, and profiled on Marketo's corporate website Sweet Swag: Champion-exclusive swag To find out more information and apply, click here. To view a complete list of current Champions, click here. Join the Marketo Elite Today!

Issue You need to obtain data in the fields on a Marketo Custom Object. Solution Marketo does not have Marketo Custom Object data export option in the UI. Smart Lists will show a list of leads with that specific attribute, and you can see custom object data on an individual Marketo record. However, using API, you or your dev team can query the Marketo database to access all values on these objects. Find out more at Custom Objects.

Issue You are experiencing slow processing of campaigns, smart lists, and reports. Solution There are three key components that can slow down an instance: Number of trigger campaigns: Trigger campaigns are always on, always listening. If there are 50 campaigns triggering at the same time, all the 50 triggers will be in queue, slowing down your processing and routing inside Marketo. Solution: Reduce the number of Triggers. Convert some of the triggers to batches: Batches also run all the flow steps for every lead at once, instead of serially, which reduces total processing time. Complexity of smart lists: The more complex a smart list, the harder it is for the system to figure it out, which increases backend processing and even creates campaign failures from timeouts. Solution: Reduce the number of nested smart lists called in a smart list. Whenever you ask Marketo to call another Smart List, it has to wait until all of the other smart lists finish, before putting together the final counts. Instead of Marketo looking for the list and running it, just put the filters in the trigger itself. Volume of Leads: With regular cleaning and good systems design, it is fairly easy to keep your system running fast. Reduce the number of leads that can flow through with filters. Clean up the inactive leads at regular intervals.

Issue What is the difference between Program Status Vs. Person Status? Solution Person Status is an attribute on a record and is an over all status for the record. An example would be a lead that has MQL or Marketing Qualified status. Program Status is the status a lead is in within a program. An example for an lead would be in a trade show or any event type program. This would have a program status of "Invited" or Registered. A single lead can have multiple program statuses, one for each program membership they have. A great way to look at it is, I have a Monthly membership to the Gym and a premium membership to the local warehouse club. I have multiple memberships and statuses for those memberships.. However my "Person Status" is different, I am for example licensed to drive in the state I live. My status is either licensed or not..

Issue There are two filters available (Acquisition Program and Acquisition Program Name), but only Acquisition Program Name appears in the lead record and is available as a column in the lead views. What is the difference between these? Solution Acquisition Program is a system-managed field. It isn't available in many picklists, nor in certain filters. Acquisition Program Name is a field that allows you to use this data more freely as it is not locked by the system. Acquisition Program = Master naming for programs Acquisition Program Name = Friendly usable name

Issue When we delete the static lists from a program after a period of time, will the leads they contain no longer be member of the program? Solution The individuals should still be a member unless you change their membership status to remove them. Remember lists are simply collections of individuals so you can easily process or associate them, they don't automatically get "membership" unless you had corresponding flow steps that you used when putting them on the list.

This is a article attached image Upon signing a contract with Marketo you are provisioned a Marketo instance and a Support Service. There are four different types of Support Services which are available to meet different customer support needs: Online (Legacy) Business or PREMIER SUPPORT BUSINESS (Legacy) Premier or PREMIER SUPPORT ENTERPRISE (Legacy) Elite or PREMIER SUPPORT ELITE Each Support Service has a different Service Level Target (SLT). An SLT is the amount of time Marketo Support targets to make first contact with you after a support case has been submitted. SLTs differ for each Support Service and priority level. Priority levels range from Priority P1 to Priority P4. Here are the SLTs and priority levels for each Support Service: Priority Online (Legacy) Business PREMIER SUPPORT BUSINESS (Legacy) Premier PREMIER SUPPORT ENTERPRISE (Legacy) Elite PREMIER SUPPORT ELITE P1 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour 30 minutes 30 minutes 30 minutes 15 minutes P2 4 hours 3 hours 2 hours 2 hours 1 hour 2 hours 30 minutes P3 6 hours 5 hours 4 hours 4 hours 2 hours 2 hours 1 hour P4 3 days 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day Here are the descriptions for each priority level: Priority Description P1 Mission Critical: Core business function down or potential loss of mission critical data P2 Urgent: Major feature or workflow is not functioning. Mission critical workflow and majority of user community is not blocked P3 Important: Normal usability or task completion is impacted but functional, or workaround is available P4 Minor: Minor issue requiring a correction. Normal workflow is not impacted Find more information About Support here!

We have enhanced the behavior of the unsubscribe functionality to make it “durable”. We have added a master email status, which is separate from the unsubscribe flag visible on the lead detail record. If the unsubscribe flag is set from false to true, the master email status is updated, and the change is propagated to other leads with the same email address. Update the Unsubscribe flag from True to False (e.g. Re-subscribe a lead) When a lead is imported, the unsubscribe flag WILL NOT be overwritten by the import. Here are the ways a lead can be re-subscribed: 1. In SFDC, uncheck the Email Opt Out field. This WILL sync to Marketo. 2. Manually update the lead detail record by un-checking the unsubscribe flag 3. Run a Change Data Value Flow Action on one or many leads a. Select the attribute “unsubscribe” and set the value to False 4. Update an existing lead via SOAP API 5. Form Field – set a field on a form to set the unsubscribe flag to “false” and this will unsubscribe the lead a. Best practice would be to have text on the form that says that by filling out this form, they are agreeing to receive email communication Creating a New Lead When a new lead is created, we check it against the master email status table. If the lead was previously unsubscribed, we will update the record to be unsubscribed. Changing an email address If you change the email address of a lead to an unsubscribed email address, the lead will be unsubscribed. This change can occur in either Marketo or SFDC. If you change an unsubscribed email address to one that is subscribed, the lead will be subscribed.

Issue When I go to the Support area of Nation, I do not have full access to all the areas and tools. Solution Our system is specific about how you need to access the Support Portal before we can authorize you to use it. The proper steps to take for us to authorize, and for you to submit cases, are as follows: Log into your instance Click the Community tile (step 1 image) Click Support in the top banner (step 2 image) Click Submit a Case option (step 3 image) Choose from top options depending on what you need to do (step 4 image) Create a case, Manage authorized contacts, edit your Info Simply going straight to the nation.marketo.com will not have the desired result. You must access the Support Portal from your instance by using these steps so that our system recognizes you properly. If this is your first time following these steps, your view of Step 3 will be different- not to worry, as that will be updated for you manually. Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 If you experience issues, please email marketocares@marketo.com

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Segmentation - Leads Assigned to a Segmentation that does not appear to exist

How Much Storage is Required to Extract My Entire Marketo Engage Database?

Marketo Support Policies

What Happens to Merged Leads in Campaign Wait Steps?

Send Email Flow Step Failed

Email Opens Not Showing in Activity Log

system not separating lead partitions for custom objects

Customer User Guide - Marketo Customer Support Links

Leads cannot be found

Updating Person Source for LinkedIn and Facebook created records

Marketo Champion Program

How to Export Salesforce Mapped Fields

How to Obtain Marketo Custom Object Data

Marketo Running Slow

Program Status Vs. Person Status

Difference between the Acquisition Program and Acquisition Program Name

Remove a List from a Program

Service Level Targets (SLT)

Durable Unsubscribe - How Leads are Unsubscribed and Re-subscribed

Support Portal Access Issues