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(Article Updated - August 2024) Overview A blocklist is a database of IP addresses or domains that have been associated with the sending of unsolicited commercial email or spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and business email networks use information from blocklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop to inbox delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blocklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blocklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When an impactful listing occurs, we reach out to the blocklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blocklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blocklists, most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below, we have compiled a list of the blocklists that commonly appear across our sender ecosystem. Each blocklist has been grouped into a top tier (Tier I) by most impactful, to the bottom least impactful tier (Tier III). These may have little to no impact across our sender network. Tier I Blocklist Spamhaus (SBL) Impact: Spamhaus is the only blocklist that we categorize as a Tier I for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery. It is the most well-respected and widely used blocklist in the world. A listing at Spamhaus will have a negative effect on your ability to deliver emails to your customer’s inbox and can cause bounce rates of over 50%. Evidence suggests that most of the top North American ISPs use Spamhaus to inform blocking decisions. How it works: Unlike many blocklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and base listings on a number of variables. Most commonly senders are listed for mailing to spam trap addresses that Spamhaus owns. Sometimes Spamhaus will list senders based on recipient feedback as well. Next Steps: Please note that every Spamhaus email can be quite different depending on the information provided and the nature of the listing . Because Spamhaus has multiple types of listings, the remediation steps are based on which type of blocklisting has occurred. We have listed the most common types to affect Marketo customers, from most to least impactful. Impact can range from a full block of top severity, to a partial block that is less severe (CSS Data, DBL). If remediation isn’t performed and the problem not addressed, these listings can increase in severity and turn into a full blocklisting. Spamhaus Blocklistings Types SBL (full blocklisting) Considered the most impactful. Remediation steps: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. Once alerted to the listing, we send an email notifying the customer, and reach out to the Spamhaus contact to start the remediation process. Only a Marketo delivery team member should be in direct correspondence with the Spamhaus contact, to speak on behalf of the customer, and to relay their questions and instructions, ensuring quick resolution and reduced impact. Senders that trigger this listing on a shared IP range will be moved to a more isolated, penalty range (IPB), so as not to impact the other shared senders. Those affected on a Dedicated IP, only impact their own sending and will not be moved. However, depending on the severity of the issue, our team may need to revoke a customer’s ability to send any emails until full resolution. The listing will last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. SBL CSS Customers are alerted of the listing with an email containing all the information needed to immediately begin the remediation process. This is part of an automated trigger listing, that allows for a customer to delist directly on the Spamhaus website, after they’ve completed remediation. Remediation steps: Customers will go to the Spamhaus IP lookup website, at https://check.spamhaus.org, where they can check on the status of their IP and continue to monitor it in real time, until it is no longer listed there. Follow the remediation and delisting instructions provided, and check for specific details in the blocklist notification email. DBL (Domain blocklisting) Customers will receive an email notification alerting of the company domain being listed. The email will contain specific information to help narrow down and identify which email source likely triggered it within Marketo. It’s important to note that any email sent from outside of Marketo, that contained the company domain, is suspect. This means, if the sender uses multiple IPs and/multiple email platforms, then any of those could be the source. Remediation steps: Follow the detailed instructions in the email, which will also provide a link to the Spamhaus Domain reputation checker webpage, to check the real time listing status of the affected domain. Once the email source is identified and cause addressed, this customer will follow the online instructions to request to be delisted. Tier II Blocklist SpamCop Impact: SpamCop is not used by any of the major North American ISPs to inform blocking decisions, but it makes it to the Tier II list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. SpamCop is considered a Tier I one blocklist for B2B marketers but a Tier II for B2C marketers. SpamCop is a dynamic IP blocklist, that can affect a single IP or a subset of IPs Typically, the block will automatically lift within one business day, but can take longer for relisted IPs. To have triggered a SpamCop listing likely means the sender has a list management problem that should be addressed. How it works: SpamCop lists IPs for one of two reasons: Either the email hit SpamCop spam trap addresses OR A SpamCop user has reported the email unwanted. Most of SpamCop’s spam traps are previously valid addresses that have not been active for 12 months or longer. Remediation steps: If you are seeing a significant number of bouncing emails caused by a SpamCop blocked IP but aren’t sure if your email activity triggered the listing, first identify whether you are sending on a shared sender network or not. If sending from a shared IP range when this occurs, you or any other customer sending from the same network may have contributed to the IP block. This IP block will automatically get dropped within a business day. For those on a Dedicated IP that trigger a listing, refer to the above remediation steps and resources, to address the list management issue. Tier III Blocklist (Low/ No impact ) These are considered the lowest tier and therefore cause the least impact across the Marketo sender ecosystem. Some of these blocklists were more impactful at one time, while others are only impactful based on the sender region (Manitu). Others still can suddenly flare up (Lashback). There are also many blocklists that are ignored (0spam), and are not taken seriously because they do not provide any means to delist once on the list (NoSolicitado) or that they charge money to have the listing removed ( UCEPROTECT ). The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry. When using blocklist tool checkers, such as MXToolBox, many blocklists will appear, but very few are relevant. Here is our selection of Blocklists you may come across that are least impactful: Project Honey Pot SpamAssassin URIBL/SURBL DrMX PSBL 0spam HostKarma Ascams ZapBL Barracuda Trendmicro Inc. Cloudmark Proofpoint Invaluement ISP Blocklists Some ISPs use internal blocklists to make blocking decisions. Examples include AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail. If your IP is being blocked by one of these networks, and those networks have a large presence in your lists, a block of this kind could have a noticeable negative impact on delivery. Marketo monitors for significant ISP blocks. Those experiencing deliverability issues with emails not making it to the Inbox and bulking in the spam folder may benefit from additional services with our Email Delivery Consultants. Remediation Steps: Email Delivery Compliance Team works to resolve any ISP blocks. ISP blocks are are usually resolved or lifted within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Customers experiencing significant blocks for Microsoft domains (outlook.com, live.com, microsoft.com), can submit a request to the delivery team to seek mitigation on their behalf. Additional Resources: Blocklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blocklist remediation Blocklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blocklist?

Issue Issue Description 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.

Issue An email program fails to send emails to a large number of leads/people in the Smart List. Solution Sometimes leads/people in your Email Program's Smart List will be skipped in the email send because they already reached their daily/weekly communication limit. You can confirm if this has occurred by following these steps: Open your Email Program. Change your view to Control Panel. Click on View Results in the top left panel to see a list of all activities attributed to the email program. Click on Filter > Custom. Select the Send Email box. Click the Apply button. Scroll to the bottom of the list. If the leads/people have been skipped due to communication limits, you will see that a large number of leads/people listed as "Skipped Lead already used up Daily/Weekly communication limit." You can check or adjust your Communication Limits in the Admin panel of your Marketo instance.

Issue You want to know the expected behavior if an email is sent to a lead from a Smart Campaign and then you add that exact same email (with the same email asset ID) to an Engagement Program nurture stream the lead is in. Solution The email will not be sent through the nurture stream, because an Engagement Program will not send the same exact same email to a lead twice, regardless of how it was originally sent. However, Marketo will send a cloned version of that email, since the email asset IDs are different.

Question: My campaign seems to be delayed, what is going on? Answer: You may have multiple campaigns running and some of them are queued. You can use the Campaign Queue to get an overview of all running and queued campaigns in your instance of Marketo. If there is a campaign backlog you can check the priority of the delayed campaigns and the campaigns at the front of the campaign queue. High priority campaigns will always move to the front of the line, followed by medium priority and low priority campaigns. If there are too many high priority or medium priority campaigns running then you may see a longer delay with low priority campaigns since they will always move to the back of the queue. You may want to consider overriding the campaign priority of non urgent campaigns that are set to high priority to reduce the priority and make room for lower priority campaigns to run. It is not recommended to set a large number of campaigns to high priority as this does not improve the processing time of the campaigns, only the order in which they are run.

Issue You made an A/B Test within an Email Program, and now when you are in a Smart List or Smart Campaign and are attempting to set up a filter (such as Opened Email), you are unable to locate the A/B test email asset in order to select it. Solution When an A/B test is made in an Email Program, the Program must be approved in order for the email to be located by other assets (Smart Lists/Smart Campaigns.) When the Program is approved, the email asset name will be changed to whatever kind of A/B test is used, and will be available for reference in other assets. For example: [program name].Subject Line Test; or [program name].Whole Email Test

Issue You are unable to abort a triggered Smart Campaign currently in progress. Solution The "Abort Campaign" function only works for batch campaigns. To stop leads from going through the flow of a triggered campaign, do the following: Deactivate the trigger campaign in the Schedule tab. This will prevent new leads from entering the campaign flow steps. It will not stop leads that have already entered from continuing through the flow. Use a "Remove from Flow" step to remove existing campaign members from the flow. This can be done a few different ways. View Campaign Members > Select All > Lead Actions > Special > Remove from Flow If the leads are in a Wait Step, you can add a Remove From Flow step after the Wait Step in the trigger campaign Create a small batch campaign with a "Member of Smart Campaign" Smart List filter and a "Remove from Flow" flow step that specifies the trigger campaign you want to remove them from.

Issue What will happen to leads currently in flow steps if you deactivate a trigger campaign? Solution If you deactivate a trigger campaign, all leads that are currently in the flow will still be processed. Deactivating a trigger campaign will only prevent any new leads from qualifying for the campaign and going through the flow steps. To stop people from continuing through the campaign flow steps, you have 2 options: Remove people from flow steps. (Recommended option) Note: You may want to add that flow step after every flow step, to target all areas where people may still be in and processing. Delete all flow steps. As people complete any flow step, they will no longer have a next option.

Issue You want to see how many (and maybe which) records have been sent a specific piece of content by a nurture stream. Solution In the Streams tab of your Engagement Program, change your view from "Content" to "People". You will see numbers below each piece of content indicating how many were last cast this piece of content and how many have been cast it total. Click on one of these numbers to see the specific records which constitute that total. Please note that the last cast is not necessarily the most recent cast of the Engagement Program, it is the last time that piece of content was sent by a cast. The "Last Cast" of the first piece of content may be from three weeks ago, while the last cast of the third piece of content may be from this week.

Issue A Smart Campaign with a "Person is Created" trigger, in combination with additional filters, doesn't qualify people as expected. Solution Using filters with "Person is Created" triggers can cause issues when a person is created, but the values that the filters look for aren't filled in yet. When the Smart Campaign checks the filters, the data it looks for hasn't been filled in yet, so people don't qualify. Here are a couple alternatives: A scheduled batch campaign that looks for people who were created and meet those filters. Use the Person is Created trigger, but use a wait step to allow time for the date to fill in, followed by choices in the flow to qualify people.

Issue Issue Description 'Members by Status' Not Shown on Engagement Program Summary - Only 'Members by Stream' Solution Issue Resolution The 'Members by Status' section that you can see on the Summary page is replaced by the 'Members by Stream' section in an Engagement Program. You should be able to see how many members have which Status on the Dashboard page. This will also show any additional Statuses that you may have added to the Channel. However, all of this information is available on the Details page for the Engagement Program in Marketo Sky.

Issue You want to send out an email to a group of people and break it up so that it sends in smaller batches over time. Solution To break up an email send over time, you can use a Smart Campaign with Choices and Wait steps in the flow. Example provided below. Choose the criteria you want to use to break up the send. In the example, we use the first letter of the last name. Use a Send Email flow step with a Choice defining your first group (Last Name starts with A-F) and select the email you want to send. For the rest of the leads, use a Default choice of "Do nothing." Add a Wait step. Repeat 1-3 for the each group, separating them with Wait steps.

Note: Once you have migrated to Admin Console, you can manage your support cases through the feature provided in the Admin Console Platform. To learn more, visit: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/customer-one/using/home.html. Once you have submitted a case to Marketo support, we provide a simple way of staying connected to your case and the cases submitted from your company through the Marketo Support Portal. You can access the support portal through your Marketo instance by selecting Community in the top right corner: This is a article attached image You can also access the support portal directly at https://support.marketo.com and login with your Marketo credentials (login and password). This will not work for users with SSO. Once you are in the support portal you can Create a Case for Marketo Support or you can also review any cases that are open and being worked on by support or review your case history. Navigate to My Case management: This is a article attached image From the My Cases navigation you can access the following case views: This is a article attached image My Recent Cases* - Cases that you have opened in the past 30 days All Company Recent Cases* - Cases that any authorized support contact has opened in the past 30 days My Open Cases – Cases created by you that are being triaged by Support and pending Support’s response and are more than 30 days old My Closed Cases – Cases that were created by you and are now closed My Awaiting Fix Cases – Cases that were created by you where Marketo is developing a fix which will be implemented at a later date All Company Closed Cases – Cases that were created by you or your colleagues that are now closed All Company Open Cases - All open cases submitted for the account Company Awaiting Fix Cases – Cases that were created by you or your colleagues where Marketo is developing a fix which will be implemented at a later date Management Escalations - Escalations opened by you or your colleagues Survey Cases - Surveys that are available for you to fill out after a case is closed *Cases that have been opened for more than 30 days will move from Recent cases to Open cases To view specific case details, click a case number. This is a article attached image From the Case Details, you can perform the following: Close your Case - Select the "My Case is Resolved" button to close your case Add Comments - Provide additional comments to support or respond to a Support question Add Attachment - Provide any screenshots or documents that will help illustrate the issue you are reporting If your case has been closed there are two options available to you. Reopen - You can reopen your case if you are not satisfied with the case resolution by adding a comment in the case. Case Survey - Once your case has closed, please consider offering feedback on the level of Support you received.

Issue Person record's Activity Log shows repeat Company Name changes without any Data Value Change being logged. In this example screenshot, we can see that the person had the Company Name set back to the correct value by the CRM sync, but there is no record of the Company Name being changed in the first place. This is a article attached image Environment Person records showing the change are all part of the same Account. One person on that holding Account fills out a form that updates the field "Company Name" to a value that is different from the Account Name CRM sync corrects the Company Name field back to Account Name Solution STEPS TO RESOLVE: 1. Find the lead that change the Company Name field on the account with a Smart List filter: DATA VALUE CHANGED Attribute: Company Name New Value: [Company Name from form fill-out] Previous Value: [Account Name] This is a article attached image 2. Locate the Data Value Change in the Activity Log 3. Check the date and time of the Data Value Change 4. Check that timeframe on other affected records 5. The timeframe of the Data Value Change back to the Account Name will approximately match the timeframe of the logged Data Value Change, showing that the update to the one person was the cause of the update for all others on that account. Root Cause Marketo uses Company Name as the identifier for the Account object. If you have multiple people on the account and one of them changes the Company Name via a form fill-out, the Company Name is changed for all other people on that Account. This change happens on the back end, so you will not see it until the CRM changes it back to the correct value in the next sync cycle.

To enable Marketo to meet the performance demands of its customers, Marketo has a standardized Data Retention Policy used across the platform. This policy applies to the activities stored in the activity logs of people in your database. Activities and Data Retention There are three components to our data retention policy: a retention period of 14 days for one activity, 90 days for twelve high-volume activities; and a retention period of 25 months for other lead activities. Activity with Retention Period of 14 days Activities Retained for 14 Days Delete Lead Activities with Retention Period of 90 days The high-volume activities listed below will be retained for 90-days. After 90-days, these activities will be permanently deleted. Activities Retained for 90 Days Add to List Change Score Change Data Value Visit Webpage Click Link on Webpage Sync Lead to SFDC Sync Lead to Microsoft Sync Lead Updates to SFDC Update Opportunity Request Campaign Email Delivered* Send Email* * Email Delivered and Send Email activities change from 25 months to 90 days effective August 31st, 2020. More information here. Activities with Retention Period of 25 Months The activities listed below will be retained for 25 months. After 25 months, all such lead activities will be permanently deleted. The only exception is the New Lead activity, which will always be displayed in the activity log. All other activities will be deleted, but the New Lead activity will not, giving you a permanent record of when the lead was created and how. Category Activities Retained for 25 Months Web Click Predictive Content Click RTP Call to Action Fill Out Form Smart Campaign Add to Engagement Program Call Webhook Change Lead Partition Change Engagement Program Cadence Change Engagement Program Stream Change Program Success Change Revenue Stage Change Program Member Data Change Revenue Stage Manually Change Program Status Compute Data Value Enrich with Data.com Execute Campaign Interesting Moment Merge Leads Remove from List Resolve Ruleset Reward Test Group Variant Schedule Test Variants Send Alert Engagement Program Cast Push Lead to Marketo Social Click Shared Link Share Content Vote in Poll Email Click Email Email Bounced Email Bounced Soft Open Email Received Forward to Friend Email Sent Forward to Friend Email Unsubscribe Email CRM - Salesforce Add to Opportunity Add to SFDC Campaign Change Owner Change Status in SFDC Campaign Click Sales Email Convert Lead Delete Lead from SFDC Lead Assigned New SFDC Opportunity Open Sales Email Receive Sales Email Remove from Opportunity Remove from SFDC Campaign Resolve Conflicts SFDC Activity Sales Email Bounced Send Sales Email SFDC Activity Updated SFDC Merge Leads Add to Case Add to SFDC Custom Object Test (Contact) CRM - Microsoft Dynamics Add to Opportunity (Contact) Add to Opportunity (Account) Remove from Opportunity (Contact) Remove from Opportunity (Account) Update Opportunity (Contact) Update Opportunity (Account) Delete Lead from Microsoft Segmentation Add to Segment Change Segment Retaining Data Marketo’s data retention policy gives you a rolling 90-day view of certain high-volume activities and a rolling 25-month view of other lead activity data. To help prevent any actual data loss, Marketo has developed a Bulk Extract API that enables you to export this data directly if desired. Once exported, you will be able to host this information locally and utilize it in any way you deem necessary. Premium Data Retention Option Marketo offers a premium Extended Data Retention subscription option that will allow activity data to be stored for 37 months instead of the standard retention period of 25 months. The high-volume activities, however, will only be retained for 90 days even with the premium option. For more information, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Issue New person records are missing data and only contain Email Address. Environment On24 Event Partner Launchpoint Integration Solution When Marketo pulls the Attendance Report, for On24 Events through the On24 Launchpoint Event Partner integration, as documented here: ON24 Event Registration Updates | Adobe Marketo Engage For any net new records to Marketo (people who registered and attended the event outside of Marketo), Marketo will only sync the Email Address and Attendance Status. This will result in records in Marketo that do not have complete data from On24, such as First and Last Name. To avoid this scenario, it is recommended that all records are properly registered for the Event through Marketo, using Marketo Forms and Registration Campaigns as documented here: Create Child Campaigns and Local Assets | Adobe Marketo Engage

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

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

Email Program Fails to Send Emails

Behavior If the Same Email Is Sent Through a Smart Campaign and a Nurture Stream

Is My Campaign Running?

Unable to Select A/B Test in Smart List/Smart Campaign

Unable to Abort a Triggered Campaign in Progress

What Happens to Leads in a Flow Step If a Trigger Campaign Is Deactivated?

Wait Step Duration Options

See Number of People Sent a Piece of Content by a Nurture Stream

New People Didn't Qualify For My Campaign

Member Statuses Not Shown on Engagement Program Summary

How to Break up Email Sends Over Time

Managing your Support Cases

Person record's Activity Log shows repeat Company Name changes without any Data Value Change being logged

Marketo Activities Data Retention Policy

Newly Created Records from On24 Missing First/Last Name