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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

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(Article Updated - August 2024) Overview A blocklist is a database of IP addresses or domains that have been associated with the sending of unsolicited commercial email or spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and business email networks use information from blocklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop to inbox delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blocklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blocklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When an impactful listing occurs, we reach out to the blocklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blocklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blocklists, most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below, we have compiled a list of the blocklists that commonly appear across our sender ecosystem. Each blocklist has been grouped into a top tier (Tier I) by most impactful, to the bottom least impactful tier (Tier III). These may have little to no impact across our sender network. Tier I Blocklist Spamhaus (SBL) Impact: Spamhaus is the only blocklist that we categorize as a Tier I for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery. It is the most well-respected and widely used blocklist in the world. A listing at Spamhaus will have a negative effect on your ability to deliver emails to your customer’s inbox and can cause bounce rates of over 50%. Evidence suggests that most of the top North American ISPs use Spamhaus to inform blocking decisions. How it works: Unlike many blocklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and base listings on a number of variables. Most commonly senders are listed for mailing to spam trap addresses that Spamhaus owns. Sometimes Spamhaus will list senders based on recipient feedback as well. Next Steps: Please note that every Spamhaus email can be quite different depending on the information provided and the nature of the listing . Because Spamhaus has multiple types of listings, the remediation steps are based on which type of blocklisting has occurred. We have listed the most common types to affect Marketo customers, from most to least impactful. Impact can range from a full block of top severity, to a partial block that is less severe (CSS Data, DBL). If remediation isn’t performed and the problem not addressed, these listings can increase in severity and turn into a full blocklisting. Spamhaus Blocklistings Types SBL (full blocklisting) Considered the most impactful. Remediation steps: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. Once alerted to the listing, we send an email notifying the customer, and reach out to the Spamhaus contact to start the remediation process. Only a Marketo delivery team member should be in direct correspondence with the Spamhaus contact, to speak on behalf of the customer, and to relay their questions and instructions, ensuring quick resolution and reduced impact. Senders that trigger this listing on a shared IP range will be moved to a more isolated, penalty range (IPB), so as not to impact the other shared senders. Those affected on a Dedicated IP, only impact their own sending and will not be moved. However, depending on the severity of the issue, our team may need to revoke a customer’s ability to send any emails until full resolution. The listing will last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. SBL CSS Customers are alerted of the listing with an email containing all the information needed to immediately begin the remediation process. This is part of an automated trigger listing, that allows for a customer to delist directly on the Spamhaus website, after they’ve completed remediation. Remediation steps: Customers will go to the Spamhaus IP lookup website, at https://check.spamhaus.org, where they can check on the status of their IP and continue to monitor it in real time, until it is no longer listed there. Follow the remediation and delisting instructions provided, and check for specific details in the blocklist notification email. DBL (Domain blocklisting) Customers will receive an email notification alerting of the company domain being listed. The email will contain specific information to help narrow down and identify which email source likely triggered it within Marketo. It’s important to note that any email sent from outside of Marketo, that contained the company domain, is suspect. This means, if the sender uses multiple IPs and/multiple email platforms, then any of those could be the source. Remediation steps: Follow the detailed instructions in the email, which will also provide a link to the Spamhaus Domain reputation checker webpage, to check the real time listing status of the affected domain. Once the email source is identified and cause addressed, this customer will follow the online instructions to request to be delisted. Tier II Blocklist SpamCop Impact: SpamCop is not used by any of the major North American ISPs to inform blocking decisions, but it makes it to the Tier II list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. SpamCop is considered a Tier I one blocklist for B2B marketers but a Tier II for B2C marketers. SpamCop is a dynamic IP blocklist, that can affect a single IP or a subset of IPs Typically, the block will automatically lift within one business day, but can take longer for relisted IPs. To have triggered a SpamCop listing likely means the sender has a list management problem that should be addressed. How it works: SpamCop lists IPs for one of two reasons: Either the email hit SpamCop spam trap addresses OR A SpamCop user has reported the email unwanted. Most of SpamCop’s spam traps are previously valid addresses that have not been active for 12 months or longer. Remediation steps: If you are seeing a significant number of bouncing emails caused by a SpamCop blocked IP but aren’t sure if your email activity triggered the listing, first identify whether you are sending on a shared sender network or not. If sending from a shared IP range when this occurs, you or any other customer sending from the same network may have contributed to the IP block. This IP block will automatically get dropped within a business day. For those on a Dedicated IP that trigger a listing, refer to the above remediation steps and resources, to address the list management issue. Tier III Blocklist (Low/ No impact ) These are considered the lowest tier and therefore cause the least impact across the Marketo sender ecosystem. Some of these blocklists were more impactful at one time, while others are only impactful based on the sender region (Manitu). Others still can suddenly flare up (Lashback). There are also many blocklists that are ignored (0spam), and are not taken seriously because they do not provide any means to delist once on the list (NoSolicitado) or that they charge money to have the listing removed ( UCEPROTECT ). The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry. When using blocklist tool checkers, such as MXToolBox, many blocklists will appear, but very few are relevant. Here is our selection of Blocklists you may come across that are least impactful: Project Honey Pot SpamAssassin URIBL/SURBL DrMX PSBL 0spam HostKarma Ascams ZapBL Barracuda Trendmicro Inc. Cloudmark Proofpoint Invaluement ISP Blocklists Some ISPs use internal blocklists to make blocking decisions. Examples include AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail. If your IP is being blocked by one of these networks, and those networks have a large presence in your lists, a block of this kind could have a noticeable negative impact on delivery. Marketo monitors for significant ISP blocks. Those experiencing deliverability issues with emails not making it to the Inbox and bulking in the spam folder may benefit from additional services with our Email Delivery Consultants. Remediation Steps: Email Delivery Compliance Team works to resolve any ISP blocks. ISP blocks are are usually resolved or lifted within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Customers experiencing significant blocks for Microsoft domains (outlook.com, live.com, microsoft.com), can submit a request to the delivery team to seek mitigation on their behalf. Additional Resources: Blocklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blocklist remediation Blocklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blocklist?

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

Summary This article explains why certain Company fields show up on the Person/Lead Object when you do a describe API call to Marketo. Issue When making the Describe call on the Lead object in Marketo (/rest/v1/leads/describe.json), several Company object fields are returned along with the Lead object fields. Environment Marketo REST API Solution This is expected behavior. Users can utilize the Describe Leads call to retrieve a full list of the fields available for interaction via the REST API. Several areas within Marketo treat custom Company fields as though they were on the Person/Lead object. For example if you were doing a Bulk Import, you can target the Company and Person/Lead fields and you have the ability to update Company field values as if you were changing it manually on a Person record in the UI. Root Cause This is expected behavior, due to how the Describe call retrieves all

Issue Can the {{system.unsubscribeLink}} be customized to point to a different page, such as a preference center? Solution Issue Resolution The system token unsubscribe link will always behave the same way, and it cannot be customized. The {{system.unsubscribeLink}} will always bring you to: sub.domain/UnsubscribePage.html. If your Landing Pages are not branded, this system token will still behave the same way and take the lead to your out-of-the-box Marketo Unsubscribe Page (ending in /UnsubscribePage.html). If you want the link to go to a different page, the easiest workaround is to create a redirect rule that sends visitors to UnsubscribePage.html to your custom page instead.

Issue After going through a modification of a text field type from 'Text' to 'String', the field is no longer available as a filter for smartlists. Don't worry, the field is not gone - it is just temporarly unavailable. Solution Changing the field type from one type to another is a database intensive operation and in some cases where the field values are widely populated across your database records, this can cause the filter to be unavailable until the operation is completed in full. The time it takes for the field filter to become available may vary and it can take up to ~30 hours sometimes until the field filter is available again after the type of the field has been changed.

Summary Aggregating/summing two score fields Issue You have two new score fields (for example: 'Implicit score' and 'explicit score') and you're wondering if there's a way to sum/aggregate these scores together for all records within Marketo. Solution To aggregate different score values together within Marketo, you should first create a third 'sum' field meant to capture the aggregate of the two scores. (Example: 'sum score') Now, we have 3 scores: Explicit Score, Implicit Score, and a Sum Score SOLUTION First, setup the scoring smart campaigns for implicit and explicit score as you normally would. Once those scoring programs are setup, add the sum score field to the flow of each respective campaign, increasing that score by the same interval that you increase the implicit or explicit score by. This should allow the scores to aggregate over time. Example 1 "Implicit Scoring campaign: Trigger: Visits web page 'x' Flow: 1. Change Score [Implicit score] Change: +5 2. Change Score [Sum score] Change: +5 Explicit Scoring campaign: Trigger: Fills out form 'y' Flow: 1. Change Score [Explicit score] Change +10 2. Change Score [Sum score] Change +10 Final result if a record runs through both campaigns > Implicit score: 5, Explicit score: 10, Sum score: 15" In the above example, the sum score flow step is simply added to each respective explicit/implicit scoring campaign, with the same change interval applied. Once applied to all relevant scoring programs in the instance, the sum score should continue aggregating the two scores into the sum score field. If you're increasing both explicit and implicit scores within one campaign instead of separating out by score type, you could also accomplish this with the same logic and instead adding the summed score interval within that same flow, for example: Example 2 "Scoring campaign: Trigger: Person is created Flow: 1. Change Score [Implicit score] Change: +3 2. Change Score [Explicit score] Change: +4 3. Change Score [Sum score] Change: +7 Result > Implicit: 3, Explicit: 4, Sum: 7" -------------------------------------------------------------------- Potential Alternative solutions: 1. Have your SFDC/CRM Admin create a workflow within the CRM which sums the two fields as they sync. This requires the score fields in question to be synced to the CRM. 2. Call a webhook, which will keep the aggregate in line with the individuals each time it's called. This would be a custom webhook implementation that Support cannot assist with. Sources for alternative solutions: How to sum Lead Scores in one aggregate score field Add two Scores in Marketo

Issue New user gets message that the password link is expired when attempting to login for the first time. Solution If the invite isn't accepted within 24hrs of the first invite email being sent, it expires and there is no way to re-send it. You will need to delete the user and create a new one with the same email address. After you delete a user, it take a few minutes to clear out of the backend, so if you get a message that the user is already in use, just wait a few minutes and try again.

Issue Can a Default program in a nurture stream be changed to the Nurture Channel for reporting purposes? Solution Program Channels can only be applied to one type of Program. Nurture Channel will only be usable on a Engagement type program. You can however have multiple channels avaliable for a specific type of program! So you can have one program type with multiple channel options, but you cannot have one channel used for multiple program types.

Issue A recent email send resulted in a number of leads specifically blocked by Communication Limits, as seen within the Results or Lead Activity Log. What are the re-sending options? Solution The Marketo Application does not offer any automatic re-sending/rescheduling functions within the campaign. If communication limits are low, and records are blocked from being sent emails, you may need to adjust the limits or set the necessary programs or campaigns to ignore communication limits. Enable/Disable Communication Limits in an Email Program Apply Communication Limits to Smart Campaign - you would need to undo this process in this case. Even if the records were not sent the email because of Communication Limits, they would still be made members of the campaign or program. If you were going to try to re-send these records that were blocked due to communication limits you could try this Filter combination: Member of Smart Campaign/Member of Program and Not Was Sent Email Those 2 filters will show you the members that were not sent the email, and then you could re-send them at a later time.

Issue The URL for the landing page shows as "https" even though you do not have SSL set up on your Marketo instance, causing the browser to display a "Not Secure" warning. Solution This can happen if the primary domain and DNS are SSL secure, but Marketo is not. For instance, if your primary domain is "mycompany.com" (SSL secure) then the DNS, which is also SSL secure, will push down the "https" transfer protocol down to all the CNAMEs on that DNS. This will force the Marketo landing page using the CNAME to use "https" in the URL, even though it is not secure. There are two ways to resolve this: Work with your IT department to see if there is a non-SSL option for your DNS Purchase SSL for your Marketo instance so that both your primary domain and your Marketo pages are SSL secure. If you would like to add SSL to your Marketo instance, please contact your Account Manager to see about adding that to your subscription.

Issue Customers may run into limitations with Webhook providers or other third party REST services that require their fields are an integer type field. This may present issues with those values being inputted to Marketo (and other systems) accurately if a record has a value outside of the integer value limitation range: -2147483647 to 2147483647 Environment Marketo/Third Party REST/Webhook Providers Solution There is no way to increase/modify the integer value limitations on the Marketo side. This is not a Marketo product limitation, it's the defined constraints of Integer data types. If you're running into issues with values from a third party/webhook provider falling outside of the limitation range, this will present issues with the field value being accurately logged in Marketo. In this scenario, it's worth checking with the third party/webhook provider to see if they have any flexibility around which field types they can allow (for example, String or Float type fields have less limitations and will allow for larger or smaller numbers outside of the -2147483647 to 2147483647 range). For a full overview of Marketo field limitations, you can visit the below article: Marketo Field Limits by Field Type

Summary How to see all the historical Support cases created for Marketo Issue How to see all the Marketo Support cases, attachments, and comments related to your historical support cases Environment Support Portal Solution Authorized Contacts can see the cases that they personally created/own, and the Support Admins can access the all cases on the entitlement from within the Support portal. Below is a community article with additional information and instructions: Managing your Support Cases

Issue You have been utilizing the default tracking links to send Emails to leads in Marketo and decide to change the default tracking link to your own branding tracking. When you do so, this breaks the links in emails you have already sent. Solution The branding tracking link should be one of the first steps that the customer(s) need to do when they obtain their instances. If you decided to change the default tracking link to a branded tracking link after utilizing them in emails, you should be prepared in advance that any email sent prior to the change will generate the 404 Error. We recommend not sending any emails within a week or two of the change so that an email sent on Monday is then broken on Tuesday.

Issue You want to lock specific parts of an email, such as the From or Reply-To, to prevent certain users from editing them. Solution Through roles and various permissions you can prevent editing of the email as a whole. You do not have the ability to allow only partial edit of an email header such as the From/To. The same applies to Sales Insight emails. Edit permissions are granted for the email as a whole Note: You can prevent people from editing pieces of an email by making those sections non-editable on the template level, but again, this would apply to all users.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Unable to clear field value

Company Fields Appear in Lead Object "Describe" API Call

Error single id enabled users cannot have their passwords reset

{{System.unsubscribeLink}} Customization

Custom field is missing as a filter after changing the field type

Cannot access 'Login' field with 'Login in Invite User Dialog' feature enabled

Aggregating Two Score Fields

Expired User Invite Email

Can a Default Program Be Changed to a Nurture Campaign Channel?

Re-Sending Emails 'Blocked By Communication Limits'

Browser Displays Not Secure Warning When Viewing Marketo Landing Pages

Can Marketo Increase The Max Integer Value Limit of 2147483647?

See Past Marketo Support Cases & Comments

Changing the Default Tracking Links to a Branded Tracking Link

Locking from Address and/or Reply-To Address on an Email