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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?

Issue You would like to use the 'SFDC Oppty Campaign ID' as a constraint for the Smart List filters ' Has Opportunity' and 'Opportunity was Updated', however, it does not appear as an option. Solution By system design, there are some opportunity fields such as 'SFDC Oppty Campaign ID' that are restricted and cannot be made visible in Marketo as a constraint or filter. One workaround is to create a custom field in Salesforce on the Opportunity object that holds the same value as the 'SFDC Optty Campaign ID' field. As a result, this field will appear in Field Management and become visible as a smart list constraint or filter in Marketo. If you would like to implement this, reach out to your SFDC admin.

Issue A/B test in Email Program status is still showing “Running test…” and not all email variants were sent as expected. Environment A/B Test Email Program Sample Size Running Test Solution To ensure the sample size qualified at least a minimum of the total variants of the A/B test. For example, if you have a total of 6 records, a sample size of 34% will suffice for 2 records (1 for variant A and 1 for variant B). Root Cause This can occur if the sample size selected is too small. For example, if you have a total of 6 records, a sample size of 1% will not suffice for 1 record.

Issue Issue Description My Tokens not appearing in an email as an option to insert. Solution Issue Resolution It is highly likely that the email is not in the program or campaign folder containing the My Tokens. Examples: The email could be located in Design Studio The email is within a program but the token is not defined in the program it is in, or the campaign folder it is in In all cases, the email must be within the program or campaign folder that contains the My Tokens.

Issue You have created a Nurture Engagement Program and are running an Engagement Stream Report, and a stream is not showing on the report. Solution One likely cause for the stream not showing on the report is that the stream is not sending out content. Once the content in the Engagement Stream is being sent (cast), then the email activity will begin to show on the Report. In order to cast content, the cadence must be set. If the Stream Cadence has been set, and the stream is still not showing on the Report, another likely reason is that there are no leads in the stream. The solution here is to add records to the stream.

Issue Issue Description Importing a program from one subscription to another is failing and is returning the following error sent via email: Marketo encountered an error while importing [Program Name] The token "lead.First Name" is not available in the destination subscription. It is either a custom field that you have to create or need to be synced from your CRM system, if you use one. This is a article attached image Solution Issue Resolution Check if there is any malformed lead.First Name token in email Check if there is any malformed lead.First Name token in email template used by the email(s) in the program Check if there is any malformed lead.First Name token within a program token Check if there is any malformed lead.First Name token within smart campaign flow step(s) This error has been known to occur when the email template had a lead token coded as follows, with a line break between 'First' and 'Name': {{lead. First Name}} Note: In this scenario, the error message received via email is actually referring to the token in the email template that contains a line break between 'First' and 'Name' but is stripped out on the message when HTML is rendered.

Issue Email Program Audience count is different than delivered/bounced email count. Solution The Audience number doesn't refresh or update once the Smart List is created, so the number of qualified people can change between then and sending the email. That is normal. If you want to double check the people, you can click the refresh button on the Audience pane of the email program just before sending, or create a separate Smart List with the same filters just before you send the email. Also be aware that the Audience may include duplicate leads, or leads that have reached their communication limit. These leads will not show as blocked, but will not be sent the email

Issue You want to edit a campaign flow after initiating the run, but there are already members running through the flow in the wait steps. Solution Generally speaking, it is best to not edit the flow of a campaign after activating/initiating. Example: Let's say that a particular campaign has 3 flow steps: Change program status Wait 2 days Send email And you would like to add a new step in between 1&2, so the new flow would be Change program status Change score Wait 2 days Send email If you add a new Flow step above a wait step, the wait step shifts down. However, currently there are leads waiting the designated 2 days (Flow step #2). (It's helpful to think about wait steps like buckets. Once a lead enters the flow step, the wait duration is calculated, and the lead waits there in that flow step bucket for that amount of time.) If the campaign was initiated, and a lead entered Flow step #2 and began waiting 2 days, and then you add an additional step above, the Wait 2 days becomes Flow step #3. Now when the leads are done waiting 2 days in Flow Step #2 bucket, then they exit and progress to #3. Even though the actual wait step shifts from #2 to #3, the lead records are still in Step #2 bucket, and they do not shift from #2 to #3, meaning they are now waiting an additional 2 days. Solution: The solution here is to create a new campaign with the desired flow steps for the same membership (same Smart List), and then run a "Remove from Flow" single action by clicking the following in the old campaign (the one you wanted to edit): View Campaign Members > Select All > Person Actions > Special > Remove from Flow. In the Run Action dialog box, click on "is" and change to "this campaign". Click "Run Now". After removing these members, they will not progress further into the old campaign flow, and now the new campaign is ready to be activated/initiated.

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 Smart Campaign within a default program has members but these are not displaying under the results for total program members or in Program Performance reports. Solution Issue Resolution Default programs do not add members to the program automatically. An "Add to Program" or "Change Program Status" flow step must be included in the Smart Campaigns that exist within the default program to make the leads members of the program.

Issue Sometimes there can be a circumstance where a text token should hold null value. Since the token must contain a value, you need to insert a value that will display as empty when the token is rendered. Solution Adding a HTML comment to the on the Text {{my.token}} side would work.  If you're just plopping the token into your HTML, this will be fine. If you're embedding it in Javascript then you can still check for that specific value, it just won't be "magic": if ( "{{my.token}}" != "" ) { // it's not empty }

Issue An anonymous lead triggers a Smart Campaign that includes a Change Program Status flow step. Instead of adding the anonymous lead to the program, you get an error, "Cannot add an anonymous lead to a program." Solution Anonymous leads can not be added to programs, but they can trigger Smart Campaigns that include a Visits Web Page trigger. If you want to capture these anonymous leads and add them to the program once they become known, add the following to your campaign. A "Lead is Created" trigger - this trigger will fire when the anonymous lead becomes known. A "Visited Web Page" filter with the specific page you are looking for. You may wish to add a Date of Activity constrain to the "Visited Web Page" filter if you do not want leads that visited the page too long ago to be added to the program.

Issue When adding 'Acquisition Program' attribute as part of 'change data value' flow step, ‘New Value’ will not get saved if it is added as a token. As an example, let's say there is a smart campaign within a program and the program has multiple tokens. One of the token is {{program.Name}} whose value is 'Sales Acquisition Campaign'. In the smart campaign, there is a 'change data value' flow step that updates the value of 'Acquisition Program' attribute to a new value. If this new value is added as '{{program.Name}}' in the flow step, and when navigating away from the campaign flow edit page and navigating back again to the same page, the 'Acquisition Program' attribute's new value will be blank. Environment Marketing Activities Change Data Value Acquisition Program Token Solution Use text instead of token to update 'Acquisition Program' value. In the above example, use 'Sales Acquisition Campaign' as the new value in the flow step instead of using token '{{program.Name}}'. Root Cause Marketo does not support use of tokens to update 'Acquisition Program' attribute.

Issue Issue Description One (or several) of the emails in your Engagement Program stream with Recipient Time Zone enabled failed to send but there was no failure or error message. You edited the email(s) within 25 hours of the next scheduled cast. Solution Issue Resolution Our Engagement Program documentations states that "We require you to schedule the first cast at least 25 hours in the future because there may be people who qualify for the cast in every time zone across the globe." (https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Schedule+Engagement+Programs+with+Recipient+Time+Zone) This also applies to making edits to emails. If you edit an email in an Engagement Program stream with Recipient Time Zone enabled within 25 hours of the next scheduled cast. The pre-processing is disrupted and the email will fail to send. To avoid the issue please either 1) disable Recipient Time Zone 2) refrain from making edits to the Engagement Program streams or assets 25 hours before the next scheduled cast. Who This Solution Applies To Customers using Engagement Program with Recipient Time Zone enabled

Issue Issue Description You would like to change the order in which the emails are being sent to leads but some of the leads have received several emails from the stream already. If the order of email is changed would those leads receive the same emails again? Solution Issue Resolution If a lead has received the email previously from any campaign or program then they will NOT receive this email as long as the email ID remains the same. Marketo will go down the list of emails within the stream until it finds one that has not been sent to the lead and this will be sent to the lead at the time of the engagement program cast.

Issue Choices are skipped in flow steps on campaigns triggered by new person creation when they are based on system managed fields such as Inferred State Region.. Solution Inferred Fields and other system managed fields my take a while to populate. When this happens, they won't have the necessary values at the moment the campaign is triggered. To resolve this, add a small wait step as the first step of the flow for trigger campaigns. This wait step allows the system to populate these fields and index them appropriately so they can be used as criteria in flow steps that have decisions in them.

Issue You want to know what the duration should be for an Email Batch Program's A/B Test. Solution When setting up an A/B Test in an Email Batch Program, the default, minimum duration of the test is 4 hours long. However, A/B tests should not usually be this short, for a couple reasons: Depending on the size of the membership, and the background processes the Marketo System is engaged in, the Email Program may or may not even be able to send the complete test during the 4 hours. 4 hours is a very short amount of time. Winner Criteria is only determined from the data gathered during the period of the test - that would be 4 hours. 4 hours may not be enough time. Ideally, A/B Tests should be "days" long, so that the test may complete and all appropriate information may be captured.

Issue You want to know if updated lead/person record data will reflect changes to that data made while the lead was in a wait step. This is important to know, because values could affect the following flow steps. For example, if there is a choice in the send email flow step that is determined by those values. Solution Any information that was updated while the lead was in the wait step will be reflected in the next step.

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

“Opportunity Campaign ID” Field Not Available in Smart List Filter Constraint Options

Status: “Running test…” A/B Test

My Tokens Not Inheriting Values from Top-Level Folder

My Tokens Not Appearing in an Email as an Option to Insert

Engagement Program Stream Not Showing On Report

Error Importing Program -Token Is Not Available in the Destination Subscription

Engagement Program Failed to Send Email in Stream

Email Program Audience Is Different than Delivered Emails

Editing Campaign Flow with Members in Wait Steps

Delay in Updating Person Records Activity Log After Campaign Runs

Default Programs Not Assigning Program Statuses Automatically

Creating a MyToken with a Null Value

Cannot Add an Anonymous Lead to a Program

'Acquisition Program' attribute reverts to blank value in change data value flow step

Email in Engagement Program Failed to Send

Changing the Order of the Content within a Stream of an Engagement Program

Choices Skipped in Campaign Triggered by New Person Creation

Email Program A/B Test Duration

Data Changes After a Lead Enters a Wait Step

Copying Data from One Field to Another