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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

Featured article

(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?

Adobe Marketo offers a number of ways to contact Marketo Support directly for assistance from our different support regions. Further details about your Adobe Success Plan can be found HERE. Note: If your Marketo Instance and Users have been migrated to Admin Console, refer to this Admin Console Overview page for managing the Adobe entitlements across your organization and to engage Marketo Support. Marketo Support Portal (https://support.marketo.com) The Marketo Support Portal features a web form to submit support cases to Marketo Support. The form provides Authorized Support contacts the ability to provide details on the support issue that allows Marketo Support to efficiently and effectively assign your case to the best suited available support engineer. We encourage you to leverage our Best Practices when submitting your case to Marketo Support. Support Services – Regions, Hours, and Languages Authorized Support contacts can engage Marketo Support by calling one of our Adobe Enterprise Phone Numbers for your region. Live Telephone and Online Technical Support Priority 1 incidents: 24x7x365 via phone or online support case Priority 2-4 incidents: Support available during regional business hours via chat or online support case. Regional Business Hours Applicable regional business hours are based on the billing address in the Sales Order or purchasing documents. If Adobe is contacted for support by someone other than the designated Named Support Contacts, Adobe may request that that the support case be resubmitted by a Named Support Contact. Languages Japanese language support is available during Japanese regional business hours, excluding holidays or Adobe days off. Japanese support is not available for Adobe Commerce. With the above exception, all Support will only be provided in English. Support Access Customer will grant Adobe Support access to applicable customer systems via remote support tools controlled by Adobe for the purpose of troubleshooting and support services. Regional Business Hours for Support Applicable regional business hours are based on the billing address in the Sales Order or purchasing documents. Americas Europe, Middle East & Africa Asia Pacific Japan 6 am – 5:30 pm 9 am – 5 pm 9 am – 5 pm 9 am – 5 pm

Issue Users for your Marketo instance are unable to log into the instance. Solution Check your landing page URLs and email links. If these are also unavailable, your Marketo instance may have been shut off. Marketo Support can confirm whether your instance has been deactivated, but are not able to reactivate it. In this situation, please contact your Marketo Account Representative to discuss the status of the instance and regaining access.

Issue You created a picklist field in SFDC and want to know if that field will sync down to Marketo with the field type of picklist. Solution Marketo has a picklist option in form fields, but not in Lead Database fields. When you sync a field from SFDC that has the type of picklist, this field will show in Marketo with a type of String. However, when you create a form, the field type for your field will show as "select," which is a picklist.

Issue What happens if you log off (close) Marketo when importing a large amount of data through list import? Will it be processed or resume when you log back in? Solution It will keep running if you log off. Next time when you have a large list to import, we would recommend sending a notification to yourself. There is a little box you can put your email address in right when you start the import, it will email you when the import is done.

Issue Leads with the same first and last name are not showing up in the Possible Duplicates list. Solution For leads to be in Possible Duplicates, they need to have the same email address which is the unique identifier in Marketo. This is the only matching that Marketo does. If the first and last name are the same and one is missing the email address or has a different email address, Marketo will not recognize this as a duplicate.

Issue After deleting a lead or contact in Salesforce that has been synced to Marketo as a person record, attempting to merge that synced Person record with another Person record in Marketo keeps failing. Solution When a merge is performed in Marketo, the Marketo Sync User will first automatically attempt to merge the associated records in Salesforce. If the records have been deleted in Salesforce this attempt to merge the records in Salesforce will fail, meaning that the rest of the merge operation will fail in Marketo. To complete this merge, the best option is to perform the merge through the API. The Merge Leads endpoint allows you to skip the automatic Salesforce merge attempt that will always run when performing the merge through the Marketo UI. Marketo support does not troubleshoot or write custom API calls like this, so it is best to work with your in-house developer or IT staff to create these API calls. http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#!/Leads/mergeLeadsUsingPOST

Issue You have Workspaces and Partitions in your instance, and a static list that used to contain certain leads is now missing those leads. The leads still exist in the database and there is no "Remove from List" activity in the Activity History for the affected leads. Solution This can happen when the workspace that contains the static list no longer has visibility to the partition that the lead record is located in. The lead may have been moved to a different partition, or the partitions that are accessible to the workspace may have been changed. To confirm whether this is the case, do the following Go to Admin > Workspaces & Partitions and locate the workspace that contains the static list Confirm which partitions are accessible to that workspace Go to the lead record of one of the leads that was in the static list before but is not now. See which partition the lead is in currently. If the lead's partition is not accessible to the static lists's workspace, the lead will not show up in the static list.

Issue You want to set a field such as "Country" to be required on a list import. Solution You cannot require a field to be included on a list import. To see any leads imported recently with blank values you can setup a Smart List with a subscription Filters -- Lead was created Source Type - Import [Field you are wanting to watch] is Empty You could setup a daily subscription to get the leads who qualify and then correct those leads as needed.

Issue You see one value for Acquisition Program and a different value for Acquired By. What do they mean and how are they different? Solution Acquired By specifically means 'this program was responsible for creating the lead record'. Acquisition Program is an attribute that you are able to change, but Acquired By is something controlled by the system that designates when that program is directly responsible for creating the record. For example, if you had an SFDC Campaign that was synced to a Marketo program, and you added a lead to that Campaign, the lead would be synced down to the Marketo program. You could then use a Smart Campaign to set the value for Acquisition Program. However, the program would not receive Acquired By credit because the lead came from Salesforce and not from the program directly.

Issue Is to possible to set up a distribution list (for internal employees) in Marketo? Solution There is no such feature called "Distribution list" in Marketo. An email can be sent to people only of they are part of your lead database. Alternate Workaround: You can create a excel sheet for your internal employees with their email addresses and import them into a Marketo static list. You can refer this list in your smart campaign whenever you would need to send a communication email. Note: Mark the email you send as "Operational" to ensure that it reaches all the people in the imported list.

Issue Issue Description Person appears to have changed Segment, but there is no activity for that 'Change Segment' recorded in the Activity Log. Segmentation was not recently re-approved, so this would not account for the behavior we are seeing in other circumstances. Segmentations Not Writing Change Activities However, the record was recently converted from a Lead to a Contact in the CRM. Solution Issue Resolution Upon Lead conversion to Contact in Salesforce, an "initial" segmentation process for that Contact is computed. During these "initial" segmentation computations, in a manner similar to when a person is initially created in Marketo, no activity is recorded in the record's Activity Log.

Issue You are trying to manually edit a lead record to remove the value of the Email field but the change doesn't save. Solution Marketo enforces this as a required field for deduplication purposes and won't allow a direct manual edit as a preventative measure. Removing the field can create duplicates, so it's generally recommended that instead of removing the field you maintain the record in your CRM or mark this record as marketing suspended to avoid inadvertent communications. However, if you need to remove the value there are two workarounds to this issue. 1) Create a smart campaign with smart list criteria that isolates that specific lead record, with a Change Data Value flow step. Specify Email as the attribute and the New Value as NULL. This will clear out the value for that field. 2) You can remove the email address from that record in your CRM. Marketo treats your CRM as the source of authority, so removing that value in your CRM will sync down to Marketo during the next sync cycle.

Issue Description: The Activity Log shows "Fill out a form" without a page visit. How users could fill out a form without visiting the page? Issue Resolution: Google Chrome introduced Incognito. Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer implemented Private Browsing. Pages that users visit in Private Browsing/Incognito will not leave traces, like cookies, on users' computers after they close all open windows. A normal visit to any page is not tracked during visits, regardless the navigation path. That includes other pages after the form is filled out. The new Do Not Track feature is a contributing factor for apparently incomplete Activity Logs. When users turn on the Do-not-track feature, the browser tells every website they visit (as well as their advertisers and other content providers) that they do not want their browsing behavior tracked. Honoring this setting is voluntary — individual websites are not required to respect it. Websites that do honor this setting should automatically stop tracking your behavior without any further action from users.

Issue A Change Data Value activity gets recorded on a person record but the Updated At field for the record doesn't get changed to reflect it. Solution The "Updated At" field in Marketo is a system managed field that gets refreshed any time that there is a data value change to a person field, but not when the field is on the company object instead. To confirm what object the field in question is on, search for it in Field Management and check what folder it is located in. The folder Info (or Lead Info) contains person fields while company fields are contained within the Company Info folder.

Issue Issue Description When a lead is created through an API call, the Reason and Source attributes say "Web Service API" with no further detail. Solution Issue Resolution As described in the doc here, https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Understanding+System+Managed+Fields, "Source" and "Reason" fields are managed by Marketo: Web Service API for Original Source Type means Person was discovered by a web service API. For Registration Source Type, it states that Person was created via SOAP/REST API When a lead is created via API, no additional "Source" or "Reason" is provided to Marketo. A possible workaround is to create a custom field and populate it as needed through the API.

Issue There is a noticeable delay between when campaign is run and affected person records are updated and activity records are written to. Solution Check the Campaign Queue. If the affected campaign is backlogged in the queue, the only resolution is to wait for higher priority jobs to clear. To check the Campaign Queue go into the Marketing Activities tile and click on the Campaign Queue Tab. Campaign queue is read only and cannot be reordered. Plan accordingly with very large campaigns to give time to process during off hours or slow times.

Issue Issue Description You receive notification that Campaign Failed in trying to update Segmentation for leads. Solution To troubleshoot this issue review the Segmentations for the following: Click on the Segmentation to pop up in a dialog box with the failed Segment(s) If a Segment failed to approve, review the Smart List filters for missing values or errors in the smart list logic of the Segment. When errors have been fixed, approve the Segment, review again if the notification occurs again.

Issue How to copy the data from one field to another field using tokens. Solution It’s very easy and it can be achieved through a Smart Campaign. Create a Smart Campaign and set up the Smart List to target the specific leads you want. In the Flow, use the Change Data Value step. You would need to choose the field you are copying to as the Attribute, and the new value as token {{lead.fieldYouAreCopyingFrom}}. When you run the campaign, the values will be copied across. Be careful when doing this as the process cannot be reversed and any existing data in the field you are copying to will be destroyed. Note: Use appropriate tokens for the field, if the field is available under lead use lead tokens otherwise company tokens.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Does Marketo reuse or recycle old deleted lead IDs

Contact Adobe Marketo Engage Support

Unable to Access Marketo Instance

Picklist Field Type in SFDC and Marketo

How to Cache or Freeze a List with Random Sample

Log off (Close) Marketo While Importing a List

Duplicate Name Leads Not Showing Up in the “Possible Duplicates” Smart List

Unable to Merge Marketo Records after the SFDC Record Synced to One of Them Was Deleted

Leads Removed From Static List Without 'Remove from List' Activity on Record

Setting a Field to Be Required on List Import

Acquisition Program vs. Acquired By and What They Mean

Creating an Internal Distribution List

Change Segment Activity Missing For Recently Converted Contact

Cannot Manually Remove Value of Email Field

Activity Log Shows Form Submission without a Page Visit

“Updated At” System Field Not Updating

"Reason" and "Source" Attributes for a Lead's Activity Simply Say "Web Service API"

Delay in Updating Person Records Activity Log After Campaign Runs

Campaign Failure: Update Segmentation

Copying Data from One Field to Another