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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 After declaring a champion for your Champion/Challenger test, you notice that the test (ex: "Whole Emails" test) in the Marketing Activities asset tree under your Email Asset is missing. Root Cause When you declare a champion, you select a Declare Date. Once this date/time is reached, only the new champion will be sent. After the test is over, it is expected behavior that the test (ex: "Whole Emails" test) will no longer be shown in the tree. This is because the test is no longer active. If you would like to retain your test data, it is recommended that you save this outside of Marketo.

Marketo campaign queues work like a mall parking lot. We accommodate average and even above average loads. But if it's Christmas, you may have to wait a while for a spot. The campaign execution queue When a flow is launched, Marketo assigns it a priority then queues it for execution. This priority is based on how the campaign was launched (batch, trigger, resume from Wait) and what's in the flow: Priority level Priority criteria High Send email (triggered) Send alert Medium Request Campaign Interesting Moment Create Task Convert / Delete Lead Add to / Remove from List Change Sales Owner / Progression Status / Revenue Stage / Field in Program Change Member of / Add to / Remove from Sync to SFDC Change Status in SFDC Campaign Low Change data value Change score Wait steps with a wait time > 5 minutes Web hooks Marketo then executes campaigns based on priorities. High priority campaigns run first in the order they were added to the queue. Once those are finished, the next highest priority campaigns are executed in time order and so on down until all have completed. If the queue contains only low priority campaigns and a new high priority campaign comes in, the high priority campaign will jump to the head of the line and run next. Batch campaigns and trigger campaigns are run and processed in separate queues. "Why is my campaign running slow?" Several factors determine how fast and when your campaign will run. In general, campaign execution time depends on: The campaign's priority The complexity of the smart list filters being used - See Best Practices for Smart Lists The number of records that qualify for the campaign The number of flow steps used in the campaign The complexity of Choices in the flow steps Even though Marketo can execute many campaigns simultaneously, there are only so many resources available to process smart campaigns. Also, certain campaign flow steps take longer to process, than others. The flow steps below take longer than most, and you may notice that difference when executing your campaigns: Send Email Delete Lead Sync Lead to Sales Add Lead to SFDC Campaign Call Webhook Speeding up your campaigns Here are some tips to speed up how and when your campaigns are executed: Do essential flow steps first If this is an auto-response or notification campaign, put the Send Email or Send Alert flow step first. Absolutely do this if you're using two slow steps in a row (Send Email followed by Sync Lead to Sales) so that the email goes out with the highest priority. Don't start with a "Wait" step If you need to delay the launch of your batch campaign, use the batch campaign scheduler. Re-think any triggered campaigns that start with a "Wait" step because it will be prioritized lower; you probably don't need to include it anyway. If you have a wait step of longer then 5 minutes this will cause all flows below it have a low priority.

It's one of the most common calls we get in Support - "This lead should have qualified for this campaign, but it didn't. Why?" Here's how we go about answering this question, and you can do it too. Did the lead actually qualify? Sometimes the leads do qualify for the campaign but don't go through the flow. One quick way to check this is to look at the campaign membership. If the lead qualified, it will become a member of the Smart Campaign, even if it doesn't go through the flow. Has the lead gone through the flow before? We can check this in the campaign results. If it has, we need to see if the campaign allows the leads to go through the flow more than once. If the campaign is set up to allow leads to run through the flow multiple times, then we need to proceed with troubleshooting. But if it is not, we have our answer - the lead didn't go through the campaign because it had done so previously and couldn't go through again. Did the trigger have constraints? If it didn't, we move along, but if it did, we need to check and see if the lead met the requirements of the constraints at the time the lead hit the trigger. This is very important. If, for instance, there was a constraint that required a value in a field, and that field was not populated before the trigger went off, then the lead wouldn't qualify. The timestamps in the activity log for the trigger activity and the value change might be the same, but if the value change for the field happened even a fraction of a second after the trigger event, it's still too late. The lead will not qualify. Looking at the lead now, it looks like it qualifies, but at the moment the campaign was triggered, the lead had different information, so check to see when the required values were written to the lead. Did the Smart List have filters in addition to the trigger? Just like the constraints, we need to confirm the lead satisfied the filter requirements before the trigger fired. This can get complicated if one of your filter requirements is "Member of Smart List" because you are going to have to go into the referenced Smart List and confirm the lead met all those requirements, and if that Smart List also contains a "Member of Smart List" filter, then will have to check that one as well and, well, you will see why we in Support recommend against nesting Smart Lists. Has the campaign been changed since the lead hit the trigger? We tend to assume that the campaign we are looking at today is the same as it was when the lead hit the trigger, but this is often not the case. Check through the Audit Trail to see if there have been any changes. Maybe a constraint was added, removed, or changed. Maybe the filter logic was changed from AND to OR. Maybe it used to only let leads go through the flow once. If the campaign was changed, you will need to go through the troubleshooting steps above all over again, checking against what the campaign used to have, rather than what it has now. If you have nested Smart Lists, it may be that the campaign didn't change at all, but a filter criteria in a the secondary Smart List did. This is another reason why nested Smart Lists should be avoided if possible. If you go through these steps and still can't figure it out, open a case in Support and include the results of the troubleshooting above so we can look into it further.

Leads can be auto unsubscribed due to default Feedback Loop setup with the ISPs listed on this page. You can use the following filters to find leads that have clicked the SPAM button in your emails: Filter 1: Data Value Changed Attribute: Unsubscribe New Value: True Reason: Contains, Customer Complaint Received from ISP. (Optional to Specify what Email Domain) Filter 2: Email Address Email Address: Contains, @domain.

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 When comparing the Engagement Score on the Engagement Dashboard, the scores do not match with the Email Insight Engagement Scores. Environment Engagement Program Email Insight Solution The Engagement Score from the Engagement Dashbaord will hold the most accurate information as this is direct information, rather than for example with RCA/RCE and Email insights where the data source is different. If you want to see Engagement Score over a period of time more accurately, use the Engagement Stream performance report: Engagement Stream Performance Report | Adobe Marketo Root Cause The Engagement Score on the Engagement Dashbaord only calculates the last 3 casest, it is also important to remember that the engagement score only includes emails that were cast more than 72 hours ago. As per this documentation: The Engagement Dashboard | Adobe Marketo In comparison, the Email Insight Engagement Score is calculated over a period of time that is set by the user but the data can still be mismatching, this is due to the fact that the data source is not the same from the Engagement Dashboard.

Issue When changing Program Status in Admin > Tags > Channel for "Event" result in this error, "Failed: no more information". Environment Changing Program Status Failed: no more information Solution "System mapping for Registered, Waitlisted, and Attended statuses is required." Therefore, ensure the status is mapped to Registered, Waitlisted, and Attended. Root Cause One or more of these statuses "Registered, Waitlisted, and/or Attended" were not mapped as required.

Issue When working on an event program, Marketo Engage users are unable to select a webinar provider in the event partner selection. Environment Event program Webinar provider (ON24, Zoom, Cvent) Solution The members need to be removed before setting up the event partner. You can remove members from a program by changing their status to "Not in Program". Root Cause Marketo does not allow selecting an event partner in a Marketo event program with members.

Issue Smart campaign email tab's count for soft bounced and delivered activities does not match the number of soft bounced and delivered activities in smart campaign results tab Example: Email tab shows 5 soft bounces, whereas, results show 6 soft bounce activities Email tab shows 10 delivered, whereas, results show 13 delivered activities Solution The email tab on a smart campaign is an Email Performance Report so it is calculated based on documented rules at Email Performance Report | Adobe Marketo Root Cause There was one lead that opened the email, so the lead was not counted as soft bounced on the email performance report and was counted as email opened based on email performance report rule #4 "If the email is Opened, bounces are ignored." There were three leads that had soft bounce activity also had a delivered email activity. Based on email performance report rule #1 "Each email activity record is set to one, and only one, of the following: Delivered, Hard Bounced, Soft Bounced, or Pending." - in this case, soft bounce takes precedence over delivered email activity so the three leads were not counted as delivered on the report but were counted as soft bounce. Environment Smart campaign Email tab Smart campaign results Email performance report

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 When an A/B test is in scheduled state and you would want to cancel it. On clicking "Unapprove Program", an error message shows up saying 'Cannot unapprove program -<program name> - is in use'. Solution Within the program, go to the trigger campaign which references these assets in their smart list, for example 1. 'Program_1.Email_Asset_1' used in 'Open Emails' trigger step in smart list 2. 'Program_1.Email_Asset_1' used in 'Clicks Link in Email' trigger step in smart list Remove asset references above within the smart list of the campaign, navigate to program and click "Unapprove Program". Root Cause This is due to the program asset being used in trigger campaigns within the program. Environment Marketing Activities A/B Test

Summary Smart campaign utilizing the 'Fills Out Facebook Lead Ads Form' trigger does not generate any results for people created as a result of filling out a Facebook Lead Ads form. Issue Smart campaigns utilizing the 'Fills Out Facebook Lead Ads Form' Trigger does not trigger for people created as a result of filling out a Facebook Lead Ads form. Solution If you have Workspaces and Partitions set up on your instance, it is important to remember that people created in the database as a result of filling out Facebook Lead Ads form, will be automatically created in your Default partition per design. In a scenario where a trigger campaign is hosted under a workspace that does not have the appropriate visibility to your default partition - the person filling out the Facebook Lead Ad form would not be triggering the campaign. Solution Make sure your trigger campaign lives under workspace which has visibility over the default person partition. To check the workspace configuration go to Admin > Workspaces & Partitions and make sure your default partition is assigned to the workspace where your trigger campaign lives under. Root Cause New people which are being created in Marketo as a result of filling out a Facebook Lead Ads Form will be created by default in the Default lead partition. Environment Customers who have Workspaces and Partitions set up in their instance. Customers who have set up the Facebook Lead Ads integration and have utilized the 'Fills Out Facebook Lead Ads Form' Trigger

Issue A smart campaign is configured to clear the field value for a field, however, when the smart campaign ran, it didn't appear to have cleared the field values and the campaign results display no activities. Solution Check to see if people qualified for the smart campaign and became campaign members by clicking on the 'View Campaign Members' button. If there were people that are in the campaign members list, then it means people qualified and the flow step did not process. If people did qualify, then check [Admin > Field Management] to see if there is a block field updates enabled on "Flow change data value" - In this case, temporarily disable the block field updates on "Flow change data value" for the field, run the campaign so that it can clear the values on the field and then re-enable the block field updates. Root Cause The smart campaign did not return any activities in the results if the flow step was only configured to change the data value of a field that has block field updates enabled for "Flow change data value" Environment Smart Campaign Change Data Value Clear Field Values Field Management Block Field Updates

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

Issue Why is there a difference between the Exhausted Count displayed in an Engagement Program Stream vs. a smart list using the "member of engagement program stream is exhausted" filter? Solution To account for the difference in a smart list that is displaying a different number of people that have exhausted the content in a stream, in the smart list account for the other conditions the Exhausted Count uses: Engagement Program Cadence of "normal" - this can be included as a constraint on the "Member of Engagement Program" smart list filter The members were not blocked - this can be included in the smart list by using the smart list filters: member of smart list is not blocklisted, unsubscribed = false, marketing suspended = false, email address is not empty and/or email invalid is false. Have not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast - there is no specific smart list filter for this, so it will need to be manually checked in a lead's activity log. Root Cause The Exhausted Count represents the latest exhausted number after the last run/cast. It has other conditions like the nurture cadence of a member should be "Normal", and the member was not blocked or have not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast. If the smart list is configured as follows, then it will display a different number as it does not account for the engagement program cadence of 'Normal' and if a member is not blocked and has not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast. #1: Member of Engagement Program is any Exhausted Content is true Program is [Program Name] Stream is [Stream Name] Environment Engagement Program Exhausted Content Smart List

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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..

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Champion/Challenger Test Disappears from Marketing Activities tree after declaring winner

How Campaign Processing Works

Lead Fails to Qualify for Trigger Campaign - Troubleshooting Flow

Finding Leads that are Auto Unsubscribed for Email Spam Complaints / Feedback Loop (FBL)

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

Why is my Engagement Score not matching with the Engagement Score in Email Insights?

Failed: no more information

Unable to select a webinar provider in an event program

Smart Campaign Email Tab discrepancy with smart campaign results

What Happens to Merged Leads in Campaign Wait Steps?

Send Email Flow Step Failed

'Cannot unapprove program -<program name> - is in use' error when trying to cancel a scheduled A/B test

Fills Out Facebook Lead Ads Form trigger campaign does not qualify people

Unable to clear field value

Customer User Guide - Marketo Customer Support Links

Leads cannot be found

Engagement program exhausted count discrepancy

Marketo Champion Program

Marketo Running Slow

Program Status Vs. Person Status