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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 Issue Description Landing Page is not selectable as a Web Page constraint value for a Fills Out Form trigger. Solution Issue Resolution Check if Landing Page is Approved Check if Landing Page is within the same workspace as the Smart Campaign with the Fills Out Form trigger [Note: this condition is only applicable if there are workspaces within the instance] Check if Landing Page is NOT within an archived folder Check if Landing Page has a form associated with it. If not, then it will not appear as a selectable option as Web Page constraint. While it is possible that a form can be inserted directly into the HTML of the landing page template, the landing page will not be associated with the form in this way. This is a article attached image For a Landing Page to be a selectable option as a Web Page constraint it must be associated with a form by inserting the form to the landing page via the UI as illustrated in our docs below: http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Add+a+New+Form+to+a+Free-Form+Landing+Page http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Add+a+Form+to+a+Guided+Landing+Page This is a article attached image

Issue After adding an IFrame to an email in the Marketo email editor, the IFrame seems to disappear when you view the email in an email client (such as Outlook, Apple Mail, or Gmail). Solution The reason why you can see the IFrame in Marketo but not in your email client is because not all email clients support IFrames. If yours does not support them, the IFrame will be blocked and will not appear in the email. You can try viewing the email in another email client to see the IFrame.

Issue Marketo Forms embedded on non-Marketo web page do not show up when using Firefox private browsing. Solution Marketo forms and Munchkin tracking are inserted into non-Marketo pages via Javascript. If the browser privacy settings block the script from executing, Marketo forms and tracking will not work. Marketo is not able to override a customer's browser security settings. The alternatives are as follows: Create a non-Marketo form on the web page Use a backend form submission to push the info in the form into Marketo. Instructions for doing so can be found here: http://developers.marketo.com/blog/make-a-marketo-form-submission-in-the-background/

Issue Using a browser with JavaScript disabled causes display and validation problems with Marketo forms. Solution When JavaScript is disabled in a browser, it can cause a couple of different behaviors. For embedded forms, the form will not load on the page because it is loaded by JavaScript. For non-embedded forms on a Marketo landing page, the form will load but it will be a bare bones version of the form that does not validate field input, because validation is handled by JavaScript. If you want to display a message to users with JavaScript disabled, you can use the “noscript” tag to display a message that prompts users to enable it in order to render the page correctly: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_noscript.asp Here’s an example using that with an embedded form: <script src="//app-sjst.marketo.com/js/forms2/js/forms2.min.js"></script> <form id="mktoForm_1001"></form> <script>MktoForms2.loadForm("//app-sjst.marketo.com", "507-ILX-247", 1001);</script> <noscript>You have JavaScript disabled! Please enable JavaScript for the best experience on this site.</noscript> For a Marketo landing page, I added an HTML Element with just the last line from the example above: <noscript>You have JavaScript disabled! Please enable JavaScript for the best experience on this site.</noscript> Alternatively, you can use a redirect solution like this, which will send users with JavaScript disabled to another page: <html> <head> <noscript> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.marketo.com"> </noscript> </head> <body> <p>Fancy redirect page if JavaScript is not detected.</p> </body> </html>

Issue After setting up visibility rules on a form, you are not seeing the dynamic values for the field when you are testing the form. Solution The most likely reason that the dynamic values are not displaying is because of a discrepancy between the visibility rules and the field values. The value for the visibility rule must match the field values. Example: A common example of this is Country/State dynamic visibility. Based on the Country selected, the State field will show with dynamic values. So say that on the form, there are 50 values for the State field and there are also specific values under the visibility rules that are associated with the Country selection. It is likely that the values in the visibility rules do not match up with these 50 field values. If you select US and the dynamic values are the full State names, such as California, but the value in the State field is CA, the visibility rules will be attempting to display a value that does not exist. The solution is to either change the visibility rules' values, or change the field values, so that the values match.

Issue You want to break the link between an email and the template originally used to create it. Solution If you need to delete an email template, or if you need to break the relationship between a template and an email to prevent template changes from affecting the email, you can do the following. Open the email in the Email Editor If you have Email 2.0, click Edit Code. If you have the legacy Email Editor, click Email Actions > HTML Tools > Replace HTML. This will allow you to directly edit the HTML for the email. Make a small edit to the email's HTML outside of the mkteditable sections. Save your changes. If you are concerned that the edit you made will affect the email, you can save the change, re-edit to undo the change, then save again. When you go back to the summary page for the email, the Template: line should now say "None". PLEASE NOTE: It is not possible to reverse this change. They link between the email and the template cannot be re-established once it is broken.

Issue Issue Description Google is changing production of their robots.txt parser to an open source format and removing support for some widely used but unsupported code: In the interest of maintaining a healthy ecosystem and preparing for potential future open source releases, we're retiring all code that handles unsupported and unpublished rules (such as noindex) on September 1, 2019. For those of you who relied on the noindex indexing directive in the robots.txt file, which controls crawling, there are a number of alternative options: -Link to Blog Post from Google: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/07/a-note-on-unsupported-rules-in-robotstxt.html?m=1 Solution Issue Resolution This should not affect any Marketo Landing pages if the Noindex, NoFollow code has been put in the Robots meta tags as per the documentation: https://developers.marketo.com/blog/block-crawling-and-search-indexing-of-a-marketo-landing-page/ This will only affect your landing pages if NoIndex, NoFollow are in the robots.txt file and not in the header meta tags.

Issue Issue Description Get the error 'Cannot get email content- Customer does not belong to any POD' when the URL from the 'view as webpage' link is forwarded for review Solution Issue Resolution This is expected behavior as of the 2019Q1 release. After clicking on the view as webpage link, the mkt_tok value will be removed. Attempts at sharing the URL after this point will fail. The mkt_tok value should not be shared. It uniquely identifies the recipient. This is a security enhancement. The preferred method is to use Send Sample to send the email to teammates, or forward the email.

Issue An embedded Marketo form on your company website showed up in the past, but is now not showing on the page. Solution Embedded forms may not show if you have mixed content on your website (meaning that your website is using HTTPS, but the embedded form from Marketo is using HTTP). To resolve this, you need to ensure the content from Marketo is also using a secure connection. You can purchase an SSL certificate to use for your Marketo forms by contacting your Customer Success Manager/Sales Account Manager.

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

Issue When forwarding email that was received via Marketo to other people, the email does not render the same in the recipient's email client. Solution This can happen when forwarding emails, as the email rendering capabilities depend upon the email client that recipient uses. HTML and CSS can be interpreted differently by different email clients. As noted in the comment below Some clients' HTML parsers don't understand all types of markup, for example an HTML4-level client will not recognize HTML5 elements. Some HTML elements and CSS rules are deliberately ignored, even if the underlying parser and (in the case of webmail) browser supports them completely The HTML markup is can be changed, sometimes drastically, from the original markup before being displayed for security reasons With that said, you can code against some of these anomalies by adding extra code in CSS to account for the differences. Marketo Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting custom code as we are not web developers. We would suggest that you consult with an HTML/CSS designer to make these changes. To ensure that the existing email templates are coded to comply with different email clients, it is advisable to consult with a web developer/designer to review the code. Here is a guide that you may find helpful: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css Furthermore, even if the clients are the same, the act of forwarding an email can itself change the HTML of the email. However, Marketo does have a workaround for this. You would just need to put the ‘Forward to Friend' link directly into an email and when the person forwards the email using this link, there is a reduced possibility of the rendering issue occurring. It also adds the forwarded email address to your Lead Database as an unsubscribed lead. The below article covers adding the ‘Forward to Friend’ link to your emails https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/'Forward+to+a+Friend+Link'+in+Emails

Issue You have a tracked link in an email. When the email is received, the link breaks and doesn't redirect to the desired page. The link works perfectly when the tracking is disabled. Solution The server hosting the link might not accept parameters, or might limit the number of characters in the parameter, etc. When tracking is enabled, Marketo adds mkt_tok=manymanycharacters. The issue could be either the page does not accept parameters at all, or does not accept such long parameters. You might need to reach out to the developers of that page and investigate this. Our suggestion is to have “track link” checked but not the “Include mkt_tok”. Unchecking just Include mkt_tok will still allow the link to be tracked, but after redirect, the destination URL will not include the mkt_tok query string parameter.

Issue When approving emails, the system shows the following error: "Note: detected the following lines in text version that are longer than 1000 characters: Line 6 and they are not fixed. The email is now approved". Solution This error is an indicator that there is a large line of text in the text-only version of the email that is over 1000 characters. This occurs when there are long links in the email which will not publish correctly in the text version of it. But still the email will be approved and can be sent. Check for excessively long links in the text version of the email and simplify them if possible. You can test it by sending a text version of the email to yourself, or by checking the Text Only version in the Email Editor.

Issue Form in Design Studio will not convert the time format upon language selection. English form with date format dd/mm/yyyy This is a article attached image Below is a form using settings with form language selecting German. The date format remains the same "dd/mm/yyyy" when the expected value should be "tt/mm/jjjj" as per language date format This is a article attached image Environment Marketo forms and common web browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Firefox. Root Cause This behaviour is related to the browser language settings. It automatically translates the date in the format of the selected language in the browser. Example of the same form with different browser language selected, the date format is changed by the browser This is a article attached image This is a article attached image

Issue Sometimes, you may receive an auto response from an email that has been sent through a batch campaign. The auto response email will not show the lead's email address instead it does contain the HTML of the email along with the Marketo decorated link. Is there a way to decipher this to determine which lead record this corresponds to? Solution You could try opening a new browser window and either clear your cookies first or use the browser's private browsing feature (makes a cookie sandbox) so you don't confuse Marketo and tie that person's lead to you by accident. Anyways, in your cookie-free browser, click the link and then go to a form that Marketo prefills for you and you may see the email address that was originally targeted.

Issue You want to delete an Email Template but that template was used to create existing emails in your instance. Solution It is not possible to delete an Email Template that is in use by emails in your Marketo instance, even if those emails are not approved. If you wish to delete the template, you will need to first delete the emails that use it. You can find these in the Used By tab in the template's information. Alternately, you can break the connection between the email and the template, which would allow you to keep the email but delete the template.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Only One Form Is Pre-filling When Using Multiple Forms on a Marketo Landing Page

Landing Page Not Selectable as a Web Page Constraint Value for Fills Out Form Trigger

IFrame Not Showing in an Email

Marketo Forms Not Showing Up in Firefox Private Browsing

Moving Design Studio Assets to a New Instance

What Happens to Marketo Forms When JavaScript is Disabled

Visibility Rules Field Values Are Not Displaying on the Form

View In Browser Link Gives Error When Clicked In Email Preview

How to Break the Connection between an Email and the Email Template

Googlebots Robots.txt Parser Update and Your Marketo Landing Pages

Getting error 'Cannot get email content- Customer does not belong to any POD' when forwarding 'View as webpage' link

Embedded Form No Longer Showing on Your Webpage

Email Template Updates Not Reflected in Existing Emails

Email Rendering Issue in Forwarded Emails

Email Link Breaks When Tracking Is Enabled

Email Error : Lines in the text version that are longer than 1000 characters

Editing the Email Header

Translation of date format in Marketo form

Determine Lead Record Using a Decorated Email Link

Deleting an Email Template That Is Used by Emails in Your Instance