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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

Issue: I am looking for the ID to one of my campaigns for a SOAP API project I am working on. Solution: The ID can be found in the URL of the campaign. 1.1 Log into Marketo, under Marketing Activities, find and select the campaign in question. This is a article attached image 1.2 The URL to the campaign will look something like: This is a article attached image The Campaign ID is between "SC" and "A", in the above example it's "1150". This is a article attached image

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.

Distributing leads to sales reps is easy. Marketo, however, only supports random distribution. This gives a pretty good approximation of the round robin technique. Prerequisites: Create A New Program Create A Child Campaign 1. Go to the Smart List tab of the campaign you created, find and drag in the Lead is Created trigger. Tip: Use the trigger that logically would come right before you want to assign the lead to a rep. This is a article attached image 2. I've added the constraint "SFDC Type is empty" so that records that already exist in Salesforce do not get re-assigned. 3. Go to the Flow tab, find and drag in the Change Owner flow step. 4. If you have 3 lead owners click on the Add Choice button 2 times. You always want the number of choices to equal the number of owners in the round robin minus one. This is because the last person goes in the Default slot. 5. Find and select Random Sample. 6. 100% divided by 3 sales reps is 33%, enter "33". 7. Find and select the first sales rep. 8. Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 for every remaining choice. Be sure to fill out the default choice also. This is a article attached image 9. Activate the campaign and it should now distribute leads randomly to your lead owners.

Issue You receive the error message of "exceeded limit" for Program Member Custom Fields (the documented limit is 20), but you don't see 20 fields listed in the Admin > Field Management > Program Program Member Info area. Root Cause There may be Program Member Custom Fields in your Marketo instance that are hidden. These hidden fields still count toward your limit of 20. As next steps, in Admin > Field Management, review the Hidden Fields area to find the hidden Program Member Custom Fields, and un-hide them. After un-hiding them, they will appear under Admin > Field Management > Program Program Member Info. To resolve the "exceeded limit" error, unused fields should be deleted. Reach out to Marketo Support to delete Program Member Custom Fields.

Issue Delay in SFDC Sync causes email to be sent with unpopulated tokens Wait steps in campaign designed to prevent race conditions are sometimes not long enough for the SFDC Sync to complete Wait steps cause delay in customer receiving their email after filling out for - bad user experience Environment Smart Campaign triggers off form fill and flow step syncs Person record to Salesforce Info from SFDC sync is used to populate tokens in email Campaign uses Wait steps to hold email send until sync is finished Solution Split the Smart Campaign into two campaigns The first campaign runs the sync activities, but does not send email The second campaign triggers off of the Data Value Changes resulting from the sync and sends the email with the email tokens populated

Issue When changing Program Status in Admin > Tags > Channel for "Event" result in this error, "Failed: no more information". Environment Changing Program Status Failed: no more information Solution "System mapping for Registered, Waitlisted, and Attended statuses is required." Therefore, ensure the status is mapped to Registered, Waitlisted, and Attended. Root Cause One or more of these statuses "Registered, Waitlisted, and/or Attended" were not mapped as required.

Issue A smart campaign is configured to clear the field value for a field, however, when the smart campaign ran, it didn't appear to have cleared the field values and the campaign results display no activities. Solution Check to see if people qualified for the smart campaign and became campaign members by clicking on the 'View Campaign Members' button. If there were people that are in the campaign members list, then it means people qualified and the flow step did not process. If people did qualify, then check [Admin > Field Management] to see if there is a block field updates enabled on "Flow change data value" - In this case, temporarily disable the block field updates on "Flow change data value" for the field, run the campaign so that it can clear the values on the field and then re-enable the block field updates. Root Cause The smart campaign did not return any activities in the results if the flow step was only configured to change the data value of a field that has block field updates enabled for "Flow change data value" Environment Smart Campaign Change Data Value Clear Field Values Field Management Block Field Updates

Issue Why is there a difference between the Exhausted Count displayed in an Engagement Program Stream vs. a smart list using the "member of engagement program stream is exhausted" filter? Solution To account for the difference in a smart list that is displaying a different number of people that have exhausted the content in a stream, in the smart list account for the other conditions the Exhausted Count uses: Engagement Program Cadence of "normal" - this can be included as a constraint on the "Member of Engagement Program" smart list filter The members were not blocked - this can be included in the smart list by using the smart list filters: member of smart list is not blocklisted, unsubscribed = false, marketing suspended = false, email address is not empty and/or email invalid is false. Have not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast - there is no specific smart list filter for this, so it will need to be manually checked in a lead's activity log. Root Cause The Exhausted Count represents the latest exhausted number after the last run/cast. It has other conditions like the nurture cadence of a member should be "Normal", and the member was not blocked or have not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast. If the smart list is configured as follows, then it will display a different number as it does not account for the engagement program cadence of 'Normal' and if a member is not blocked and has not exceeded the communication limit at the last nurture cast. #1: Member of Engagement Program is any Exhausted Content is true Program is [Program Name] Stream is [Stream Name] Environment Engagement Program Exhausted Content Smart List

Issue You would like to have a list of leads who will get blocked from receiving emails when you send email via campaign or program due to Communication Limits. Your Communication Limit setup can be found in the Admin Panel and looks something like this. This is a article attached image Solution You can create a Smart List with the below setup and this list will show you the list of the people who will hit communication limit when you try to send an email. This is a article attached image To learn more about Communication Limits and how they work, you can review this article.

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 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 A lead met the trigger criteria but failed to trigger a Smart Campaign Solution When a trigger campaign Smart List contains both triggers and filters, the filters criteria must be satisfied before or at the exact moment the trigger fires. To determine whether this is the case for a particular lead: Look at the Smart List to determine what filter criteria need to be satisfied. Open the lead's activity history and see when the activity occurred that should have triggered the campaign. Go through the lead's activity history and determine when the values were set for each of the filter criteria. If one of the values was set after the trigger fired, the lead would not have qualified in time to go through the Smart Campaign.

Issue You are experiencing slow processing of campaigns, smart lists, and reports. Solution There are three key components that can slow down an instance: Number of trigger campaigns: Trigger campaigns are always on, always listening. If there are 50 campaigns triggering at the same time, all the 50 triggers will be in queue, slowing down your processing and routing inside Marketo. Solution: Reduce the number of Triggers. Convert some of the triggers to batches: Batches also run all the flow steps for every lead at once, instead of serially, which reduces total processing time. Complexity of smart lists: The more complex a smart list, the harder it is for the system to figure it out, which increases backend processing and even creates campaign failures from timeouts. Solution: Reduce the number of nested smart lists called in a smart list. Whenever you ask Marketo to call another Smart List, it has to wait until all of the other smart lists finish, before putting together the final counts. Instead of Marketo looking for the list and running it, just put the filters in the trigger itself. Volume of Leads: With regular cleaning and good systems design, it is fairly easy to keep your system running fast. Reduce the number of leads that can flow through with filters. Clean up the inactive leads at regular intervals.

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 Best practices for trigger campaigns. Solution Trigger campaigns in Marketo look for ANY activity that could be related even if there is a filter or constraint. If you have 10 Clicked Email Campaigns active, and 100 Leads click on an email. Each lead has 10 evaluations to determine if that trigger qualifies. They will still evaluate even if they will not qualify due to constraints or filters. Here are some best practices to assure your trigger evaluation step is as quick as possible: -Turn off any trigger campaigns that are no longer needed. (This will reduce the # of active monitors that will cause evaluations to fire off for a trigger event) -Note: Once a quarter, Marketo will find smart campaigns that have sat dormant (no people trigger it) for 6 months or more and deactivate them automatically. However you can manually deactivate campaigns on your own. -Convert Trigger campaigns to Batch if they are not needed for immediate response (for activities or campaigns that can run nightly). Batch campaigns run on a separate component of Marketo's processors which doesn't affect the Trigger qualifier speeds. Each instance's situation can be unique. Our support team would be glad to go over best practices for your instance and also review how you can self-maintain the campaign deactivation through the Campaign Inspector.

Issue How "And/Or" logic is applied to constraints in Smart List filters and triggers. Solution In Smart List filters, additional constraints act as "and" logic. Example: Was Sent: [this email asset] between this date range min number of times: 2 will function as Was Sent: [this email asset] -and- between this date range -and- min number of times: 2 When you have multiple values inside a single constraint, that is "or" logic. Was Sent: [this email asset OR that email asset] There is not a way to change the logic of constraints, so if you wish to have some sort of 'Or' between constraints then you would have to use multiple filters with 'OR logic between them.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Find A Marketo Campaign ID

Is My Campaign Running?

Distribute Your Leads Round Robin or Randomly

Customer User Guide - Marketo Customer Support Links

Error exceeded limit for Program Member Custom Fields

Delay in SFDC Sync Causes Email to be Sent With Unpopulated Tokens

Failed: no more information

Unable to clear field value

Engagement program exhausted count discrepancy

Identify Leads That Have Reached Their Communication Limit

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

Email Program A/B Test Duration

How to Create a Custom Interesting Moment Type

Lead Does Not Trigger Smart Campaign

Marketo Program Salesforce Campaign Status Mismatch

Marketo Running Slow

Email in Engagement Program Failed to Send

Using Tokens in Smart Campaigns

Trigger Campaign Best Practices

And/Or Logic in Trigger and Filter Constraints