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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?

*Updated in September 2024 Leads can be auto unsubscribed due to default Feedback Loop setup with the ISPs listed on this page. You can use the following filters to find leads that have clicked the SPAM button in your emails: Filter 1: Data Value Changed Attribute: Unsubscribe New Value: True Reason: Contains, complaint (Optional to Specify what Email Domain) Filter 2: Email Address Email Address: Contains, @domain.

If you have submitted a support case and you feel that the case was improperly handled or that the solution being offered does not meet the communicated Marketo support expectations, then we would welcome the opportunity to look deeper at your specific support engagement and work with you on delivering a better resolution. Caution: If the item you're looking to escalate is related to a Production Down incident, please call the support line for your region to receive immediate assistance. Support Manager escalations are only handled during normal business hours. The phone numbers for each region are listed below, follow the prompts for P1: Americas: +1.877.270.6586, Direct: +1.650.376.2303 Europe, Middle East, & Africa: +353 (0)1 242 3030, UK: 0800 151 3030 Asia Pacific: +61 2 8031 8188 Japan: +81.03.4233.9014 How to Escalate: Step 1. Navigate to the "Case Management" area of the support portal either by mousing over the Support tab and selecting "Case Management" or clicking the Support tab and click on the “My Case Management” button. NOTE: You will need an open or recently closed case in order to escalate to support leadership. This is a article attached image Step 2. From here you will need to click on either an open or a recently closed* case: This is a article attached image *Support Cases that have been closed for longer than 10 days are no longer eligible to be re-opened and we ask that you open a new support ticket for your current issue prior to escalating to a Support Manager. We ask that you have an open support ticket for a Support Manager to be able to address specific issues. Step 3. After selecting a case, click on the Escalate to Manager button: This is a article attached image Step 4. A pop up will display and you will need to the purpose for the escalation and click on the “Escalate” button. This is a article attached image Once your support escalation case has been submitted a Marketo Support Leader will contact you within 1 business day of your support region's support hours to address the issue.

Issue When attempting to move a folder with a program into a different workspace, the below exception is thrown: Rule is incomplete, '<Field Name> is...' requires value In the below example, the field name is 'New Status ID': Solution This exception is thrown when a smart list within the Folder contains an incomplete filter. To resolve, you can either: 1. Remove the Smart List filter that is incomplete 2. Set a value for the Smart List filter

Issue After creating an Email Program with an A/B test, you create smart lists (or smart campaigns) and would like to use filters such as "Opened Email" for the A/B test email. When starting to type the A/B test email name into the smart list filter, the A/B test email name does not show as available to select (it may show a red squiggly line). Solution The Email Program (with the A/B test) needs to be in "Approved" status before the A/B test email assets can be entered into a smart list filter.

Issue: You create Marketo campaigns but they are not showing up in Sales Insight in Salesforce. The steps below illustrates all the steps that are required to make these campaigns show in Sales Insight. Resolution: 1. Make sure the trigger campaign in Marketo that you want to access through Sales Insight is using the "Campaign is Requested" trigger with a source of "Sales Insight" This is a article attached image 2. Activate the campaign you created in Step 1 above from the "Schedule" tab of your campaign. This is very important. If the campaign not activated, it will never show up in Sales Insight.

The Marketo users at your organization have created several special campaigns for your leads and contacts. Typical examples include sending someone a whitepaper about a new product or mailing a series of nurturing emails for people not ready for sales. To add a lead or contact to one of these campaigns, go to that person's detail page and find the Actions menu in the Marketo Sales Insight section. Pick Add to Marketo Campaign and click Go: You can also select leads in your list and search views if you've added the Add to Marketo Campaign button to those views. You can add 200 leads at once this way: After picking the leads, you'll see a list of potential campaigns; below the selected campaign is a brief description provided by your marketing team. Pick the campaign for this person in the Campaign Name pulldown, then click Finish:

Issue Issue Description When using a Velocity scripted my.token, the default value is not being used if the field the Velocity script is pointing to is not populated. Solution Issue Resolution The reason for this is because Velocity script isn't designed to consider a default value the way that a lead token would. It's designed to execute the code to provide the rendered value. Although the UI specifies to look for a default, that's ignored by design since the code itself is only looking for the value for those leads. If the goal is for it to evaluate and provide a known value, otherwise then render a specified default, that needs to be built into the Velocity script code itself.

I'm trying to find out who had a lead score change from a specific smart campaign - would I use data value changed with a reason or some other filter? The Data Value Change trigger/filter with the Reason constraint is appropriate for finding leads that had their Lead Score changed by something such as a manual edit or Smart Campaign. This is a article attached image This is a article attached image This screen shot shows examples of how you might set this up. The list below shows a few of the values you may see in the Reason field. If you know the exact phrase you are looking for, use the "is" operator. For example, "Changed by Smart Campaign Contact Us." If you don't know the exact value, try using the operator "starts with" or "contains." Synched from salesforce.com Changed by Smart Campaign System flow action System action reset Form fill-out SOAP API Manual lead edit Munchkin API Import/merge into list The Reason filter constraint is available in these filters: Data Value Changed Lead Partition Changed Progression Status was Changed Revenue Stage was Changed Not Data Value Changed Not Lead Partition Changed Not Progression Status was Changed Not Revenue Stage was Changed

Included in this article Overview Troubleshooting To Try http:// and https:// No Munchkin Tracking Code on Web Page No Visitors to the Web Page Yet Tips for Triggers and Filters Selectors Overview Have you ever tried to enter a web page into a Visits Web Page trigger or filter and gotten an unexplained red squiggly line? It looks like the one you get in Microsoft Word when you have a spelling error. You hover your mouse over it and it says "Invalid URL" even though you know that the web page is a good one. This can be a frustrating one, but here are a few things to look for to troubleshoot this problem. Troubleshooting To Try There are a few different reasons why this could happen. You could have an error in the formatting of the URL entered, you could have a page that isn't being tracked or hasn't had any visitors. Here's what to check for. http:// and https:// Using http:// or https:// in the beginning of the URL can cause the red line to appear. Check if you have it in the URL. If yes, remove it and the red line should disappear. No Munchkin Tracking Code on Web Page If the web page you're entering doesn't have the Munchkin tracking code on it yet, there's no way for Marketo to "see" the page at all. Make sure the Munchkin code is on the page and is actively tracking as it should be. For more details, check out Add Munchkin Tracking Code to Your Website - Marketo Docs - Product Docs No Visitors to the Web Page Yet Another cause for the red squiggly line to appear is if there have been no visitors tracked by munchkin on the targeted page. Filters look through lead record activity logs for the activity they're looking for. If the filter is searching for leads that have visited a particular web page but no leads have logged that activity yet, the filter can read this as an invalid URL, similar to if there were no Munchkin code on the page. Check the page for visits. Make sure you have a munchkin installed on the page you are requesting. Create a test lead and visit the targeted page. Tips for Triggers and Filters Here are a couple of things that may help when using these filters and triggers. Selectors "Is" Selector In Triggers and Filters, if you use the selector "Is", (as in "the web page IS xyz.123.com") then the results returned will only be those from an exact URL match. If you want to also find results for the page xyz.123.com/sales, they won't be returned when using the "is" selector. NOTE: The "is" selector will return results in filters much faster since it is only looking for exact matches. "Contains" Selector If you use the selector of "contains", (as in "the web page contains xyz.123.com"), then this would return results for all pages that have xyz.123.com. Therefore, xyz.123.com/sales would match. The page xyz.123.com/products would match. All variations of that site xyz.123.com would match up. NOTE: The "contains" selector in filters will take a little longer to process because it has to evaluate the entire URL string in every web page visited to identify whether there's a match for the value anywhere within the URL. It's not extremely long of a delay, but you may notice a little slowness.

Issue Trigger Tokens in a Batch Campaign Flow are not functioning as expected, or result in an error. Solution Issue Resolution Trigger Tokens can only be used in a Trigger Campaign Flow and will not work in batch campaigns. While originally intended for Interesting Moments, Trigger Tokens will also work in Change Data Value flow steps. The associated Trigger Tokens will only function with the corresponding Triggers denoted by the green check-marks in the chart here.

Issue Best practices for trigger campaigns. Environment This applies to all Marketo users who are utilizing trigger campaigns in their marketing activities. Solution Marketo's trigger campaigns are designed to monitor every relevant activity, even if it doesn't immediately meet certain constraints or filters. For example, if there are 10 active Clicked Email Campaigns and 100 leads engage with an email, each lead will be evaluated 10 times to check if they qualify for a trigger. In this example that would lead to 1000 evaluations total. This happens even if they don't meet the criteria due to certain filters or constraints. To make your trigger evaluation process quicker and more efficient, follow these best practices: 1. Deactivate any trigger campaigns that are no longer needed. This reduces the number of active monitors that could potentially activate trigger event evaluations. Note: Marketo automatically deactivates smart campaigns that have been dormant (no lead triggers them) for 6 months or more on a quarterly basis. However, you can manually deactivate campaigns whenever necessary. 2. Convert Trigger campaigns to Batch campaigns if immediate responses are not required. This is particularly useful for activities or campaigns that can run overnight. Batch campaigns operate on a separate component of Marketo's processors, meaning they won't impact the speed of Trigger qualifier processes.

Issue When you go to schedule a Smart Campaign, the Status tab says it is "set to affect about N/A people" instead of showing the actual number of leads that should go through the campaign. Solution There are two probable causes for this There is an error in the Smart List. If the Smart List references another nested Smart List, the error may be in the secondary Smart List, so you may need to drill down when you check this. The Smart Campaign has a Smart List in it with the same name. For example, if the Smart Campaign were named "EMEA Networking" but it also contained a Smart List named "EMEA Networking", it would cause the list processor to give this error. Making one of the names slightly different - "EMEA Networking Smart List" - should resolve this issue. If you have tried both options and are still unable to get the affected leads count to resolve, please contact Marketo Support with the results of the above troubleshooting and we will investigate further.

Issue You are trying to add a new stream to an Engagement Program but get an error stating that your program has reached maximum number of streams per program. Solution Due to engineering constraints and as well as to have better user experience, we have limited the number of Engagement Program Streams per program to 25. When you try to add 26 th stream, you will now get the error message “You have reached the maximum number of streams. Create another program”. So the solution is to create a separate Engagement Program and a Smart Campaign that moves leads from the original Engagement Program to the new one.

Issue You're receiving an error that states 'Not Allowed - Error approving <asset-name> - {{token-name}} : Token key not found' when trying to approve an email asset. Solution Check that token syntax is correctly inserted with no missing left or right 'curly' brackets '{{' '}}' Check that the field name of the token does not have any incorrect spelling (e.g. Email Address) If the token syntax is correct and the field name of the token is spelled correctly, it is possible that the field name of the token contains a Unicode non-breaking space (e.g. between 'Email' and 'Address'). This would have been inserted if it was copied across from a platform that was encoded with Unicode (e.g. Microsoft Word) - To rectify this, delete the space in the token and re-insert it with a normal space using the spacebar on the keyboard. Once this is corrected, the email approval should work.

Issue A recent Smart Campaign or Email Program sent Person records in Marketo more emails than should be allowed based on settings in Communication Limit Settings in the Admin area of Marketo. Solution This is commonly caused by one of three things: The emails that sent after the communication limit was hit were Operational. To verify if this is the case, select the email asset from the menu tree on the left and review the summary of the asset in the canvas where you will see if the email is Operational or not. The Block non-operational emails checkbox is not checked in Edit Communication Limit Settings. Setting values the "Per Day" and "Per 7 Days" dropdown menus does not enforce the communication limit. In order for this limit to be enforced, the "Block non-operational emails" checkbox must be checked. Enable Communication Limits The Email Program or Smart Campaign are not set up to follow Communication Limits. Apply Communication Limits to Smart Campaign Enable/Disable Communication Limits in an Email Program

Issue An email was expected to sent out on a specific cast of Nurture Program but a specific lead or couple of records did not receive it. Environment Marketo>Engagement Program Solution There are a number of steps to begin troubleshooting this query and here is a flowchart how to proceed. 1). Check if engagement program is turned on from its setup up. Also check if at the time of email cast, the program status was on (this can be checked from Admin>Audit Trial) 2). Check if the email asset which was expected to send was present in the Nurture Stream at the time of cast. Also check if that email asset was activated (having green arrow). Both of these can be checked from Audit trail where you will find the log of "Add Email" and "Activate Email" along with its date/time. 3). Check if the lead is present in that specific stream using the smart list filter "Member of Engagement Program > Stream = <required stream>" 4). In the same smart list, use filter of "Engagement Program Cadence Changed" and set "New Value = Paused" and see if that lead qualifies it or not. A paused cadence would mean the lead has been temporarily restricted to move in the flow of nurture stream and hence will not received any email content. 5). Most important step- Go to the activity log of lead and search for the engagement program's name in the quick find bar. Look for all logs along with their dates when the lead performed any activity related to that engagement program like added to program, changed cadence, removed from program, etc. 6). In continuation of step 5, check in the activity log if the lead was added to engagement program in less than 25 hours before the next cast by looking at the time of log "Added to Engagement Program". This is because as per the doc, the lead must be added atleast 25 hours before the cast to abide by the recipient time zones otherwise it will skip that current cast and will qualify for the next cast. Schedule Engagement Programs with Recipient Time Zone | Adobe Marketo Engage 7). In continuation to step 5, check if the lead was moved to a different stream via getting qualified into transition rules. Transition rules are present in stream of those engagement programs that have more than one stream and are used to move leads from one stream to another. Transition People Between Engagement Streams | Adobe Marketo Engage 8). Check if the lead is unsubscribed, email invalid, email suspended (this one is only valid for 24 hours), marketing suspended or block listed because any of these 5 conditions would block the lead from receiving any communication from any of the Marketo's program or campaign. 9). Check if the record has hit the communication limit. Go to Admin>Communication limit and see what we currently have setup. If limit is 2 emails per day, then create smart list "Was sent email>Email Is ANY> Minimum Number of times 2" and see if lead qualifies in it. Alternatively you can go into lead's activity log and manually count number of "Send Email" logs in last 24 hours and in last 7 days and match it with the communication limit of Admin tab. Using programs as stream content: We can also use programs (default and event) in nurture stream instead of direct email assets. 10). In case of using a program, the email can be sent out to the required audience only if that program have a smart campaign with filter "Member of Engagement Program>Name of Program" and flowstep of "Send Email". So make sure the smart campaign has these configurations. (Make sure the campaign has to be a batch campaign and not trigger) 11). If above pointer is true still record is not present in the result tab of the campaign, then check all steps from step 1- step 9. If nothing is found then check if smart list has more than just "Member of Engagement Program" filter and if the lead is failing to qualify any of the other filter. 12). Check in the schedule tab if qualification rules says "Each Lead can qualify only once". If yes then go to campaign member tab and search if lead is already a member, if yes then lead will not qualify again and this is why email was not sent. 13). Check if flowstep has a wait step and the lead is stuck there because wait step does not create any log in the results tab. People in waitstep can be checked from dashboard of the smart campaign. 14). For any other possible reason why the lead did not qualify the smart campaign, you can look for the knowledge base "Lead not qualifying smart campaign- Universal Checklist" under heading of Batch Campaign: marketo.my.salesforce.com/articles/en_US/Article/Lead-not-qualiying-smart-campaign-Universal-Checklist?popup=true 15). If all above pointers have been checked still unable to figure out why the email was not sent on a specific cast, escalate the case to Tier 2.

Summary Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure Issue This flow step choice type causes a campaign failure because it is not supported. This is expected behavior. Solution Customers have to use Member of Smart List as indirection for the desired filter condition. i.e. Create a new Smart List with the "Deleted from SFDC" filter. Then change this failing flow step choice to use 'Member of Smart List' with the Smart List just created. Example flow step:

Issue You are using choices within flow steps with parameters such as "Member of Program" and the lead is qualifying for the choice when they are not part of the program. Solution When using a flow step for a campaign, you have the option of adding "choices" to the flow step so different leads can have different interactions. When using a choice parameter such as "Member of Engagement Program" or "Program Status". If the lead has been part of ANY engagement program, or has EVER had a program status equal to the parameter (i.e program status is email > sent), then the lead will qualify for that step. To prevent outside leads from being pulled in, use the "Member of Program" filter in your campaign Smart List to make sure content is delivered to your intended audience.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

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

Escalating a Support Issue

"Rule is Incomplete" Error When Attempting to Move Program Into New Workspace

Unable to reference AB test email in smart list or campaign

My Marketo Campaigns Are Not Showing Up in Sales Insight

Adding People to Marketo Campaigns from Salesforce

Velocity Scripted Tokens Not Using Default Values

Using the Reason Constraint on the Data Value Changed Filter

Troubleshooting Visited Web Page Filters/Triggers Giving Invalid URL Message and Red Squiggly Line

Trigger Tokens in Flow Steps Render Incorrectly

Trigger Not Capturing Change: SFDC Is Deleted

Trigger Campaign Best Practices

Smart Campaign Status: Set to Affect Around N/A Existing People

Reached Engagement Program Stream Limit

Error Approving Email - Token Key Not Found

Email Sent to Leads Who Have Exceeded Their Communication Limit

Engagement Program not shooting email

Flashing Clock Icon on Batch Campaign

Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure

Flow Step Choices Qualifying Leads who are Members of Other Programs