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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 lead has an Unsubscribe activity logged in their activity history, but they continue to receive emails after the Unsubscribe. Solution An Unsubscribe activity is logged when the lead clicks the system Unsubscribe link embedded in a Marketo email. However, if that link takes them to a Preference Center that allows them to select from multiple options, they may not choose the full unsubscribe option and may continue to receive selected emails. To confirm if this is the case, find the Unsubscribe activity in their activity log and double-click on the activity to open it. This will show you the choices they selected in the email preferences form. In the example below, the lead did not fully unsubscribe, they only chose to unsubscribe from specific content. Since they did not choose the global unsubscribe, they will continue to receive some emails.

Issue You see a record in the database has something similar to the following Email Suspended Cause: "554- Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact the intended recipient via alternate means." Solution The 554 error is generated by a hard bounce due to a spam block. It is possible that one of the sending IP addresses used may have been on a temporary blacklist the day of the attempted send. This happens while using shared IPs when another Marketo instance using the same IP hits a spam trap, putting the IP on a blacklist for 24 hours. This error can also happen to users on a dedicated IP if they hit a spam trap with one of their email sends.

Issue Issue Description How to add a seed list in a batch Smart Campaign or Email Program. Solution Issue Resolution Import the seed list addresses into an appropriately-named static list Add a filter in the Program/Campaign Smart List to include the static list. The trick will be to make sure the filter logic is correct. Advanced Logic may need to be used in the Smart List of the Program/Campaign. For example, if there's a sending campaign with 5 filters to send to an audience 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND (4 OR 5) then you will want to use Advanced Logic and put parentheses around the original filter set (1 AND 2 AND 3 AND (4 OR 5)) and add the seed list outside the parentheses with OR logic (1 AND 2 AND 3 AND (4 OR 5)) OR 6 In that advanced logic, the original intended membership (1 through 5) exist within its own set of parentheses and the Seed List is included in addition (OR 6).

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.

We manage our network to provide our customers with the highest server availability and best deliverability possible. Marketo has a strong anti-spam policy and a team that handles blacklist notifications in our IP space and spam complaints. We also cooperate with most major anti-spam providers and ISPs. In addition, we maintain feedback loops for many of the most popular email providers. For more information on feedback loops and ISPs with whom we have this arrangement, click here. Blacklistings are usually caused by sending mail to a spam trap email address. For an explanation on what causes blacklisting, click here. When we receive notification of a blacklisting, we react in two ways. First, we go through the procedures to remove the listing from that blacklist as soon as possible. Second, we determine (if possible) which of our customers caused the blacklisting and work with them to improve their mailing lists to prevent a reoccurrence in the future. This is usually a cooperative process, most frequently, a review of mailing policies and strategic pruning of a customer’s lead database will return them to best practices.

Quick points: *Spamtraps are addresses owned by antispam organizations *Emailing a spamtrap (usually) gets your IP or domain blacklisted *Maintain current, direct opt-in with an active lead database to avoid this What is a spam trap or spamtrap? A spam trap, or spamtrap is an email address secretly owned by an antispam organization that is used to detect spam. Antispam organizations do not sign up for mailing lists, so they consider any email sent to these addresses to be spam. Once email is sent to the spamtrap, the antispam organization that owns this address will blacklist the IP that sent the email (or, less often, domains that are linked in the message). Email administrators purchase subscriptions to various blacklists, and use the lists to block all incoming email from listed IPs or containing listed domains. From the marketer’s perspective, this can mean a high number of bounced emails leading to low lead engagement, and ultimately to weak revenue performance. There are two types of spamtraps – pristine traps, and repurposed/recycled traps. A pristine trap is an email address that was never used by a person. A repurposed trap is an email address that once belonged to someone but is no longer a valid address; these addresses will bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before an antispam organization will turn them into live traps.< How can a spamtrap get into my Marketo lead database? Purchased data Purchased data is unreliable. The antispam world does not like the use of purchased data so antispam administrators have made a concerted effort to get spamtrap addresses into the databases of data vendors. While data vendors may say they provide opt-in data in reality consent should be direct to your company./p> Sending unsolicited email is prohibited by the Marketo Terms of Use because this practice has a high risk of causing blacklist issues that can destroy deliverability for multiple Marketo customers. To avoid spam traps get direct opt-in before sending email. If you have purchased data in the past we recommend setting any inactive purchased leads to marketing suspended or simply removing them from your database. Old data Repurposed traps are email addresses that were once valid but are now owned by an antispam organization. This can happen when a company goes out of business; expired domains are often purchased by antispam organizations. Sometimes a company that has a direct partnership with an antispam organization will allow email addresses of former employees or users to become spamtraps. Because antispam organizations will generally make sure future spam traps return a bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before they become spam traps you can prevent repurposed traps in your database by emailing remaining engaged with everyone in your database at least once every six months. Avoid “wake the dead” campaigns to addresses you have not contacted in more than six months. Unconfirmed form entries People can unintentionally enter spamtrap addresses into forms either by making a typo or by intentionally using a fake email address that happens to be a spamtrap. If you use single opt-in, you may add spamtraps to your mailing list. This is more likely to happen if you are a B2C company or if someone thinks they can get whitepapers or free trials simply by filling out a form with made-up information. How can I identify spamtrap addresses? Spamtrap addresses are considered trade secrets by the antispam organizations. They do not share these addresses because their goal is for senders to change their mailing practices rather than to simply remove spamtraps from their mailing lists. That said, one thing we do know about spamtraps is that they tend to be automated processes and do not engage. Spamtraps do not click links. You can use smart list filters to identify inactive leads in Marketo. How can I prevent spamtraps in my database? Maintain active, direct opt-in for all leads. Don’t purchase data. (To grow your list, sponsor events, use list rental services that send the first message for you, or use co-branded content that sends you only good leads) Email everyone you want to email at least once every six months Don’t add old data directly to your mailing list. (If you need to, add in small batches and send a welcome email with a slightly different subject to each batch.) Regularly clean your database of inactive leads Grant access to assets such as free trials and whitepapers as email links to discourage intentional use of fake email addresses on forms Use scripting on your forms to identify potential typos

Overview A blacklist 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 blacklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop in inbox delivery rates or overall delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blacklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blacklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When we are alerted to a listing we reach out to the blacklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blacklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blacklists out there most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below we have compiled a list of the blacklists that our customers most commonly encounter. Tier 1 Blacklist Spamhaus Impact: Spamhaus is the only blacklist that we categorize as a tier 1 for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery of all of the blacklists. It is the most well-respected and widely used blacklist 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 blacklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means that they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and basing their 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: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. When we see a listing we immediately alert the customer and contact Spamhaus to start the remediation process. Listings last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. Tier 2 Blacklists 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 2 list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. 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. Next steps: SpamCop is a dynamic blacklist, listings typically resolve themselves within one business day. There is no action you will need to take to action the delisting with SpamCop, the Privacy Team researches every SpamCop listing and will request delistings when an alert is received that an IP is listed. If your email activity triggered a SpamCop listing it likely means that you have a list management problem that should be addressed. Manitu Impact: Manitu is a German blacklist and has a wide footprint in Europe. Email senders with European audiences tend to encounter this blacklist most frequently. Manitu is not used by North American ISPs to inform blacklist decisions but if you’re sending to Europe a listing could be problematic. How it works: Listings are automatically activated when a sender mails to a Manitu owned spam trap address. Next steps: The Privacy Team researches and requests delisting when an alert is received that a Marketo IP is listed. By working with this blacklist the Privacy Team is usually able to identify the customer and let them know that email activity from their subscription triggered a listing. Because Manitu operates solely on the use of spam trap addresses, getting listed by Manitu is a clear indication that senders need to audit their mailing lists. Tier 3 Blacklists SORBS Impact: The impact of a listing at SORBS is very minimal. How it works: SORBS uses several methods to identify potential spammers. Most of their lists use spam traps to identify problematic senders. But SORBS will also list a sender based on their own user complaints, if SORBS administrators have received spam from the sender, or if they identify other high-level sending behavior patterns characteristic of spammers. Next steps: The Privacy Team monitors SORBS activity and makes delisting requests for Marketo IPs as necessary. Oftentimes, SORBS will refuse to delist within a certain timeframe based on the severity of the issue. Sometimes this can be up to several weeks. UCEPROTECT Impact: The impact of a listing at UCEPROTECT is very minimal, though the blacklist has a greater footprint in Europe. The organization does not have a good reputation in the industry because they charge senders to request delisting. How it works: UCEPROTECT lists IPs that send mail to their spam trap addresses. Next steps: We ignore these listings because the only way to have them removed is to pay. The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry so UCEPROTECT has a very limited reach. ISP Blacklists Some ISPs have their own blacklists that they use to inform blocking decisions. A few examples are Comcast and Verizon. 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 this type of ISP specific blacklisting and the the Privacy Team works to resolve these as soon as possible. Usually blocks at Comcast and Verizon are resolved within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Additional Resources: Blacklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blacklist remediation Blacklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blacklist?

When someone emails abuse@marketo.com to tell Marketo that they received unsolicited email from one of our customers, the result is called an abuse report. Instead of just hitting the “Report Spam” button, someone actually took the time to write to our abuse@marketo.com address and explain to us that they never wanted email from the sender. Because of this direct complaint we take these types of spam reports very seriously. Only about 10% of our customers ever receive any abuse reports at all so it is cause for investigation if you receive one. If you receive notification that someone filed an abuse report against your account review your list management practices. Below are some things to consider: When people sign up to receive emails from you, is it made clear to them that they are giving you permission to email them? Have you recently added any new leads or lead sources? Have you recently added older leads to your database that you have not reached out to in the past 6 months or more? Was there anything about the campaign that was complained about that makes it different from previous campaigns? In most cases people file these kinds of reports because: They never requested to be on your email list. They did request to be on your email list at some point but have forgotten because they have not heard from you in so long. The importance of using explicit opt-in in your list building efforts cannot be stressed enough. You should also send to active leads consistently enough that they continue to expect emails from you. The best ways to avoid complaint driven reputation issues is to send to opted-in, engaged recipients. To help with this, a lot of senders clear out their inactive leads every 6 months or so. An inactive lead is a contact that has taken no action in the given time period— they haven't opened an email, clicked a link, visited your webpage, attended a Webinar, and so forth. Inactive leads are a dangerous group to continue mailing to because their behavior proves that they do not want to interact with your mail and will likely complain to Marketo or to their ISPs about it. We have a great resource on how to create a Smart List to remove inactive leads here. If you still need some help, please feel free to reach out to our Support team (support@marketo.com). Additional resources: Abuse Report Deep Dive Blacklist Deep Dive

Unfortunately, we can only provide you with whatever information the blacklist provided to us. This information should all be included in the notification email you received from us. If that notification did not contain any information about the email campaign that triggered the blacklist issue, please contact Support. Additional Resources: Can you give me the spam trap address that triggered the listing? What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? What is a blacklist? How does Marketo respond to blacklisting and spam notifications? Top blacklists - What you need to know Blacklist Remediation Successful Reconfirmation

Issue Issue Description An email was sent to leads but immediately returned an 'Email Bounced Soft' Activity Type with the Activity Details stating: 'Details: Empty address: []' Solution Issue Resolution This is due to a token used in the 'From Address' Field in the Email editor that does not have a valid value or valid default value. For example: {{lead.Partner Email:default=edit me}} The Record's field value for 'Partner Email' is Empty. As there is no value for the record the token would use the default value 'edit me' which is not a valid value. A valid value must be an email string format such as mark@eto.com

Issue You have a lead that is marked as Email Suspended and you are not sure whether they can receive Marketo emails or not. Solution When emails bounce as spam, the lead that bounced is set to "Email Suspended." "Email Suspended" is a historical field. A more accurate name for this field would probably be "This email was suspended at some point in its history." The actual suspension only lasts 24 hours. To see if the lead is currently suspended, check the timestamp on the 'Email Suspended' field. If it is more than 24 hours ago, the lead is not currently suspended and can receive email from your Marketo instance. However, the "Email Suspended" flag will remain on the lead record for the purposes of future troubleshooting. It is not possible to set "Email Suspended" to "false" once it has been set to "true." The "Email Suspended Cause" field will provide the bounce message associated with the most recent spam bounce.

Issue You see a soft bounce on a lead and in the details you see it show System send failure: Reply-To address parse error (value of the address) Solution Confirm the tokens you are using are for the proper field and that the value for the field is an email address. The parse error occurs when we cannot generate or create a proper email address in the From Email or the Reply To Email fields. The error will show in the parenthesis the value we tried to put in.. For example Service Department is in the parenthesis, this would be an example of a incorrect field being used.

Issue Description The exact distinction between the "Email Bounces" and "Email Bounces Soft" filter and trigger is unclear. Issue Resolution The “Email Bounces” trigger or filter will look only at hard bounces, where Marketo received a definitive "No" from the target server. The “Email Bounces Soft” trigger or filter only looks at soft bounces, which occur when we are unable to deliver the email, but did not receive a rejection from the target server. You can use both filters with "OR" logic in order to look at all bounces.

Syntax Recommendations Common Look Up mechanisms a: mx: include: ip4: ip6: exists: ptr: all Common Modifiers redirect= exp= An A Record must ALWAYS contain IP address (map host to IP) CNAME (Alias) must contain hostnames. No IPs here NS an MX records must contain host names. No IPs allowed. MX records (for mail servers) should contain hostnames NOT IPs. Too Many Mechanisms Section 10.1, "Processing Limits" of the SPF RFC 4408 specifies the following in regards to DNS lookups: SPF implementations MUST limit the number of mechanisms and modifiers that do DNS lookups to at most 10 per SPF check, including any lookups caused by the use of the "include" mechanism or the "redirect" modifier. If this number is exceeded during a check, a PermError MUST be returned. The "include", "a", "mx", "ptr", and "exists" mechanisms as well as the "redirect" modifier do count against this limit. The "all", "ip4", and "ip6" mechanisms do not require DNS lookups and therefore do not count against this limit. The "exp" modifier does not count against this limit because the DNS lookup to fetch the explanation string occurs after the SPF record has been evaluated. This limit is in place to prevent SPF lookups from being a useful avenue for Denial of Service attacks. Using an example SPF record as an example to illustrate, this record was breaking with 12 look-ups: example.com text = "v=spf1 include:_spf-a.example.com include:_spf-b.example.com include:_spf-c.example.com include:_spf-ssg-a.example.com include:spf-a.anotherexample.com ip4:131.107.115.215 ip4:131.107.115.214 ip4:205.248.106.64 ip4:205.248.106.30 ip4:205.248.106.32 ~all" [ 5 mechanisms] _spf-a.example.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:216.99.5.67 ip4:216.99.5.68 ip4:202.177.148.100 ip4:203.122.32.250 ip4:202.177.148.110 ip4:213.199.128.139 ip4:213.199.128.145 ip4:207.46.50.72 ip4:207.46.50.82 a:mh.example.m0.net ~all" [ +1 = 6 mechanisms] mh.example.m0.net a = 209.11.164.116 _spf-b.example.com text = "v=spf1 include:spf.messaging.example.com ip4:207.46.22.35 ip4:207.46.22.98 ip4:207.46.22.101 ip4:131.107.1.27 ip4:131.107.1.17 ip4:131.107.65.22 ip4:131.107.65.131 ip4:131.107.1.101 ip4:131.107.1.102 ip4:217.77.141.52 ip4:217.77.141.59 ~all" [+1 = 7 mechanisms] spf.messaging.example.com text = "v=spf1 include:spfa.anotherexample.com include:spfb.anotherexaple.com include:spfc.anotherexample.com -all" [+3 = 10 mechanisms] spfa.anotherexample.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:157.55.116.128/26 ip4:157.55.133.0/24 ip4:157.55.158.0/23 ip4:157.55.234.0/24 ip4:157.56.112.0/24 ip4:157.56.116.0/25 ip4:157.56.120.0/25 ip4:207.46.100.0/24 ip4:207.46.108.0/25 ip4:207.46.163.0/24 ip4:134.170.140.0/24 ip4:157.56.110.0/23 -all" [+0 = 10 mechanisms] spfb.anotherexample.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:207.46.51.64/26 ip4:213.199.154.0/24 ip4:213.199.180.128/26 ip4:216.32.180.0/23 ip4:64.4.22.64/26 ip4:65.55.83.128/27 ip4:65.55.169.0/24 ip4:65.55.88.0/24 ip4:94.245.120.64/26 ip4:131.107.0.0/16 ip4:157.56.73.0/24 ip4:134.170.132.0/24 -all" [+0 = 10 mechanisms] spfc.anotherexample.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:207.46.101.128/26 ip6:2a01:111:f400:7c00::/54 ip6:2a01:111:f400:fc00::/54 ip4:157.56.87.192/26 ip4:157.55.40.32/27 ip4:157.56.123.0/27 ip4:157.56.91.0/27 ip4:157.55.206.0/24 ip4:157.55.207.0/24 ip4:157.56.206.0/23 ip4:157.56.208.0/22 -all" [ +0 = 10 mechanisms] _spf-c.example.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:203.32.4.25 ip4:213.199.138.181 ip4:213.199.138.191 ip4:207.46.52.71 ip4:207.46.52.79 ip4:131.107.1.18 ip4:131.107.1.19 ip4:131.107.1.20 ip4:131.107.1.48 ip4:131.107.1.56 ip4:86.61.88.25 ip4:131.107.1.44 ip4:131.107.1.37 ~all" [+0 = 10 mechanisms] _spf-ssg-a.example.com text = "v=spf1 include:_spf-ssg-b.example.com include:_spf-ssg-c.example.com ~all" [+2 = 12 mechanisms] _spf-ssg-b.example.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:207.68.169.173/30 ip4:207.68.176.1/26 ip4:207.46.132.129/27 ip4:207.68.176.97/27 ip4:65.55.238.129/26 ip4:207.46.222.193/26 ip4:207.46.116.135/29 ip4:65.55.178.129/27 ip4:213.199.161.129/27 ip4:65.55.33.70/28 ~all" [+0 = 12 mechanisms] _spf-ssg-c.example.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:65.54.121.123/29 ip4:65.55.81.53/28 ip4:65.55.234.192/26 ip4:207.46.200.0/27 ip4:65.55.52.224/27 ip4:94.245.112.10/31 ip4:94.245.112.0/27 ip4:111.221.26.0/27 ip4:207.46.50.221/26 ip4:207.46.50.224 ~all" [+0 = 12 mechanisms] spf-a.secondexample.com text = "v=spf1 ip4:157.55.0.192/26 ip4:157.55.1.128/26 ip4:157.55.2.0/25 ip4:65.54.190.0/24 ip4:65.54.51.64/26 ip4:65.54.61.64/26 ip4:65.55.111.0/24 ip4:65.55.116.0/25 ip4:65.55.34.0/24 ip4:65.55.90.0/24 ip4:65.54.241.0/24 ip4:207.46.117.0/24 ~all" [+0 = 12 mechanisms] Character String Too Long 255 character limitation in a single string https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-00356/0/Can-I-have-a-TXT-or-SPF-record-longer-than-255-characters.html http://www.string-functions.com/length.aspx You may have more than 255 characters of data in a TXT or SPF record, but not more than 255 characters in a single string. If you attempt to create an SPF or TXT record with a long string (>255 characters) in it, BIND will give an error (e.g. "invalid rdata format: ran out of space".) Strings in SPF and TXT records should be no longer than 255 characters. However to get around this limitation, per RFC 4408 a TXT or SPF record is allowed to contain multiple strings, which should be concatenated together by the reading application. In the case of use for SPF (using either TXT or SPF RRs) the strings are concatenated together without spaces as described below. Reassembly by other applications of multiple strings stored in TXT records might work differently. 3.1.3. Multiple Strings in a Single DNS record As defined in [RFC1035] sections 3.3.14 and 3.3, a single text DNS record (either TXT or SPF RR types) can be composed of more than one string. If a published record contains multiple strings, then the record MUST be treated as if those strings are concatenated together without adding spaces. For example: IN TXT "v=spf1 .... first" "second string..." MUST be treated as equivalent to IN TXT "v=spf1 .... firstsecond string..." SPF or TXT records containing multiple strings are useful in constructing records that would exceed the 255-byte maximum length of a string within a single TXT or SPF RR record. EXAMPLE text = "v=spf1 ip4:199.15.212.0/22 ip4:72.3.185.0/24 ip4:72.32.154.0/24 ip4:72.32.217.0/24 ip4:72.32.243.0/24 ip4:94.236.119.0/26 ip4:37.188.97.188/32 ip4:185.28.196.0/22 ~all“ text = "v=spf1 ip4:199.15.212.0/22“ " ip4:72.3.185.0/24 ip4:72.32.154.0/24 ip4:72.32.217.0/24" " ip4:72.32.243.0/24 ip4:94.236.119.0/26" " ip4:37.188.97.188/32 ip4:185.28.196.0/22 ~all" Null Records in the SPF Record A record that is NULL or that does not exist will break an SPF record. Syntax within the record is very important, if there are extra spaces between mechanisms it will count as NULL. EXAMPLE text = "v=spf1 ip4:199.15.212.0/22“ <- accurate text = "v=spf1 ip4: 199.15.212.0/22“ <- NULL (NOTE the space between IP4: and the IP) Repetitive Records in the SPF Record - Void Lookups If there are too many repetitive mechanisms in the SPF record, including records that cascade (for example when using "include:") the record will break. There is a MAX of 2 void look ups in an SPF record. More than that and the record will break. This prevents SPF records from being used in Denial of Service style attacks. Validation Tools SPF checker, syntax validator and SPF tester http://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html SPF checker http://vamsoft.com/support/tools/spf-policy-tester SPF validator http://vamsoft.com/support/tools/spf-syntax-validator CIDR Calculator http://www.subnet-calculator.com/cidr.php Nslookup http://network-tools.com/nslook/ SPF creation wizard http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/ Common SPF errors http://www.openspf.org/FAQ/Common_mistakes SPF syntax definitions http://www.openspf.org/SPF_Record_Syntax

As part of your efforts to maintain a healthy inbox delivery rate, you should be monitoring your email bounce rates. If your hard bounce rate climbs above 5%, you should take a closer look at what’s going on. If your hard bounce rate hits 10% or more, you should be concerned about your data quality. If you have a high hard bounce rate, it is likely that you have a high number of invalid addresses. An invalid address is an address that has never existed or no longer exists, so mail will never be delivered to these addresses. Marketo automatically stops sending to these addresses, so you do not need to worry about suspending or removing them. But having a high invalid address rate could cause you major delivery problems and reputation issues, and could indicate problematic data sources or list segmentation practices that should be reevaluated. A high invalid address rate can lead to outright blocking of your mail at major ISPs. Many ISPs monitor the number of invalid addresses being sent to at their domains by specific senders. Once a certain threshold is hit, those ISPs will block mail coming from the offending sender. ISPs behave this way because they view a high rate of invalid addresses as an indication of problematic data practices of the sender. At best, a high invalid address rate means you are not sending to an engaged, active audience. At worst, it means that you are sending to purchased or rented lists, which is a violation of Marketo’s Email Use and Anti-Spam Policy. Chances are, if you have a high invalid address rate, there are other issues with your data that could also contribute to. If you receive a notification that we have noticed a high invalid address rate associated with your mailings, you should ask yourself some questions about your list management practices. Below are some things to consider: - Have you recently added any new leads or lead sources? Purchased lists are often full of invalid addresses. We often find that purchased lists contain numerous addresses from domains that don’t even exist any more. While you can use purchased lists to bulk up the data you have for existing leads, you cannot use them to bulk up your lead database. -Have you recently targeted old or inactive leads? We strongly recommend that you never send to an address that you haven’t mailed to for over a one year. You should be mailing to your contacts at least every six months. This will help prevent high invalid address rates, and will also help keep you and your content fresh in your contacts’ minds. If you do have to send to older leads, you should break up your lists and send to your most recent and active contacts first. - Who are you targeting? Some senders have more problems with high invalid address rates because of their target audiences. For example, targeting .edu domains often causes high invalid address rates because these are school addresses that have a higher turnover rate. B2B campaigns may sometimes have higher invalid address rates because of similar turnover rates at businesses. The best way to avoid high invalid address rates is to send to opted-in, engaged recipients. To help with this, a lot of senders clear out their inactive leads every six months or so. An inactive lead is a contact that has taken no action in the given time period— they haven't opened an email, clicked a link, visited your webpage, attended a webinar, and so forth. This can help with both your high invalid address rates and spam complaints. Inactive leads are a dangerous group to continue mailing to because their behavior proves that they do not want to interact with your mail, and will therefore likely complain to us or to their ISPs about it. We have a great resource on how to create a Smart List to remove inactive leads here. If you still need some help, please feel free to reach out to our Support team (support@marketo.com). Additional resources: Dos and Don'ts of Effective Lead Generation Best Practices for Purchased Data

Before sending a Marketo email, you can preview it in order to ensure accuracy and the correct design. In Design Studio, find the email in the tree. Clicking on the email opens the Details page for that email. Click Preview Email to see the email as recipients will see it. You can also preview an email from the Email Actions dropdown menu. The Previewer provides a highly accurate rendition of your email. You can even preview every possible combination of content that can be generated using Dynamic Content and lead data brought in by tokens. For emails using Dynamic Content, you can send multiple versions of a test email at one time, up to 100 emails all sent to one specific email destination. If you are using the View Lead Details option, you can use a list you select. The list can be created expressly for this purpose. If the list is longer than 100 leads in length, only the first 100 leads will be used. Marketo creates variations using the content you specify for the Segments that leads belong to; tokens are also resolved. This allows you to see exactly what your users will see when they receive the email, even when you use multiple Segmentations in a single email. Note: If the email, and the campaign that sends it, are in the same Program, each My Token will resolve to the value appropriate to that Program. However, if the email and the campaign are in different Programs, the My Token resolves differently depending on how the email is sent. For sending test emails and single flow actions, the My Token resolves to the value appropriate to theemail’s Program; for emails sent by campaigns, the My Token resolves to the value appropriate to the campaign’s Program. Is this article helpful ? YesNo Use the Previewer To preview an email, find it, then follow these steps: 1. In Marketo Lead Management, choose the Design Studio tab. Look at the tree on the left-hand side of your screen. 2. In the tree, click the + next to Emails. A list of landing pages opens. 3. In the tree, click the email you want to use. Details appear for the email. 4. Click the button, Preview Email. The Previewer opens. 5. Inspect the page carefully. 6. If you find problems, click Preview Actions, and choose Launch Editor. You can then fix problems in the Email Designer. 7. If you used Dynamic Content, the version shown is the Default for all Segmentations used by the email. To view other versions, choose View by Segment from the pull-down; use the left and right arrows, and the Segment pull-down in the top right corner, to view each combination of Segments. The version of the email reflecting each combination of Segments displays. 8. If you used Tokens or Dynamic Content, and you want to see how the email will render for a set of preselected leads, choose View by Lead Detail from the pull-down, then choose a list from the pull-down in the dialog box which appears; use the left and right arrows, and the pull-down, to step through the leads. The email updates with information for that lead. 9. To send a test email, for any version of the email, bring that email onscreen in the Previewer; then, click Send Test. That version of the email will be sent as a test email. Tokens at the global level will be resolved; My Tokens – tokens that are a local asset to a Program – will not. 10. When finished, close the Previewer.

This originally appeared on the Brand Driven Digital blog, 9/19/2013. Written by Marketo's Digital Marketing Evangelist, DJ Waldow. Used with permission. Unemotionally Subscribed – People on your list who have not opened or clicked an email message from you in an extended (several months) period of time. They have not unsubscribed. They have not marked your message as spam. They either ignore it or take the time to actually delete it every time it lands in their inbox. Now, it depends on who you ask, but the percentage of your list that is considered “unemotionally subscribed” can be as high as 30%. Yup. Nearly one out of every three folks on your email list are not interacting with your emails … not at all. As I mentioned in this What Counts guest post, once you figure out who fits this “inactive” criteria, you have a few options: Immediately unsubscribe or delete them. I call this the “DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200″ approach. Move to a new list and mail to less frequently. I call this the “I think I need to see you a bit less often” approach. Send a last ditch “We missed you” type email. If they don’t respond, then do #1. I call this the “I’m going to give you one more chance” approach. Set up a re-engagement email series. I call this the “I really don’t want to break up, but if you are not responding at all, well, it’s over” approach. No one method is necessarily better than the other. I’ve seen all 4 executed before. As I often say, the best practice here is the one that’s best for your subscribers (and your business). I recently came across a great – creative, human, funny – example of #3, the last ditch “we missed you” email. Thanks to Suzanne Oehler who forwarded me this email. Check out this email from NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network The subject line – We miss you! - was certainly one that would stand out in many inboxes. The intro paragraph was short and to the point, but nothing crazy. But then it got fun … and creative. The first call to action read: “If you’d like to continue receiving NTEN emails, click here by Friday, August 2nd. Yay! This makes us very happy.” Again, they get right to the point. They even add a bit of “human” (Yay! This makes us very happy.) But it gets better. The “click here” link leads to hilarious Happy Dog video. IF you are a dog owner, you’ll love this. The second call to action read: “If you’d rather not receive NTEN emails, we’re sad to see you go. Simply delete this email and in a short time your account with NTEN will be removed from our systems.” Nothing crazy. Direct. Clear. Simple. However, the “sad” link again goes to a video – this one goes to a Sad Cat Diary video. Warning: some language in this video is NSFW. Then again, if you’ve ever owned a cat, you’ll appreciate the humor. The third, and final, call to action read: “Of course, if you change your mind, you can always sign up again” with the “sign up” link taking clickers to their email subscription landing page, of course. Now, fun and creative is one thing. If campaigns like these do not meet their intended goals (getting folks re-engaged), then, well, they are just “fun and creative.” So … Did It WORK? I contacted the team at NTEN to see how effective this campaign was. Below is what they shared with me. They sent this email to a list of 24,000 subscribers who had not opened in email from them in the past year. For this particular campaign, they reported the following metrics: Open rate – 38.89% vs. 26.73% “average” over the previous few emails Click-to-Open Rate* – 47.37% vs. 12.3% “average” over the previous few emails *in other words, of the 38.89% who opened the email, nearly 50% clicked at least one link Of those who clicked a link, the Top 4 most-clicked links were: 41.14%: Click Here (Happy Dog … to stay subscribed) 4.91%: Unsubscribe 2.21%: Sign up 2.14%: Sad (Sad Cat … to opt-out) By all accounts, I’d say this “We Miss You” campaign was a HUGE success? What do you think? Have you tried a “reenagement campaign in the past? If so, how effective was it for you? Drop a note in the comments below! P.S. The email marketing team at NTEN shared their “lessons learned” from this campaign in this blog post. I love their transparency. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

If you sent an email from the Lead Database (as a Single Flow Action), as part of a campaign, or as a test email but didn't receive it, here are some tips. Check the "From:" address When sending a test message, make sure to check the "From:" address setting on your message. To do this, go to the Email Settings tab of the email editor. In the "From:" field, make sure that you either have a single valid email address, or a valid email address as the default. Many people want to send their messages from the lead owner. When you use the send test feature, the email address you are sending to doesn't have a full lead record, and so it doesn't have a lead owner. Since Marketo cannot send an email with no "From:" address, test messages without a valid email address in the "From:" field will not send. Send as a Lead If you have verified that the email had a valid From: address and you still aren't getting it, make sure to create yourself as a lead and send using a flow action. See if the mail was sent If you sent the email as part of a campaign or Single Flow Action, check the campaign's Results tab or your lead detail page to see if that mail was already sent to you. If it hasn't been sent yet, try waiting a little while longer. Check your Junk Mail In your email client, check your Junk Mail or Spam folder to see if the mail landed there. If it did, you should change the content of your email. Check your corporate spam filter Your corporate mail server may have blocked emails from Marketo; you should contact your IT department to see if this is the case. Please see our instructions for whitelisting Marketo's email servers: Add Marketo to Your Corporate Email Whitelist Try sending to a different recipient If you sent the original mail to your corporate account, try sending to a personal account on Yahoo or Gmail. If you sent it to a personal account, try your corporate mail account. Use Marketo's Email Deliverability product The Email Deliverability PowerPack, with Design Informant and Inbox Informant, can warn you when your mail is being rejected because of its content and help you identify junk mail pitfalls. Also, using Domain Keys and SPF improve the chances of your email landing in your leads' inboxes. Contact Marketo If you still can't figure out what happened contact Marketo to see if we can help.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Lead Continues to Receive Emails After Unsubscribe Activity is Logged

Email suspended cause 554 error

Adding Seed List to Smart List in Batch Campaign or Email Program

Service Level Targets (SLT)

Durable Unsubscribe - How Leads are Unsubscribed and Re-subscribed

How Does Marketo Respond to Blacklisting and Spam Notifications?

What Is a Spamtrap and Why Do They Matter?

Top Blacklists – What You Need to Know

Abuse Reports: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

Can You Give Me More Information regarding the Blacklist Issue?

Email Bounced Soft With Details 'Empty address: []'

How the Email Suspended Field Works

Soft Bounce “System Send Failure Reply-To Address Parse Error”

The Difference between “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft”

Common SPF Errors & Fixes

High Invalid Address Rates: The what, how, and why you should care

Preview an Email

A Creative Re-Engagement Email Campaign

I Didn't Receive an Email that I Sent