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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

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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?

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Technically, you cannot move records backwards in a progression status. The only so called “backward” status that you can change the record to is a progression status of “Not In Program”; however, doing this removes them from the membership of the program. If you do this procedure, this will allow you to re-add them with a different status. We mentioned technically this cannot be done but logically, there is another method that allows you to juggle the record’s progression status but in a more lateral movement with what appears to be in a “backward” state. This is all dependent on how you have your channel steps configured. To access your channel steps, please do the following: Choose Admin Choose Tags Click the + next to Channel Locate the channel you wish to configure and highlight it Click the drop-down menu towards the top of Tag Actions, and select Edit You should now see a pop-up window that allows you to configure the status steps for that channel like the following example: This is a article attached image If you configure statuses that have the same step number, this will allow you to move the record in a lateral movement which, in a sense, is somewhat like a backward progression but it really isn't. With the example screen capture, I can do a change in progression status of “Invited” to “Attended Show” and vice-versa because the step is with an identical number. If I wanted to change in progression status of “Invited” to “Engaged” and back, it will not work because the step value is not identical. You can reference more information about this in the Create a Program Channel article.

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.

If the user makes changes to the my tokens, snippets, etc during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will those changes be reflected—No If someone unsubscribes during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will they receive the email—Yes Can you cancel a head start program once the processing of the an email that is using head start has begun—Yes What happens to the processing data when someone cancels a program during the processing of the an email that is using head start—It is deleted (I.e. Program membership, etc.)

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 have been sending live emails (non-samples) to yourself or colleagues to test functionality of an upcoming email blast, and even though you may be opening the email, you are not seeing the open email activity on the Lead Activity Log. Solution Note that there may be a slight delay between opening the email, and the activity displaying on the Log. Marketo considers an "open" to be when the images in the email are downloaded, specifically a single-pixel tracking image. The recipient may be receiving the emails and viewing them, but not downloading the images. This would not count as an "open." Please note that since text-only emails have no images, so they will never log an Open activity. If the images are being downloaded, and you are still not seeing the activity after about 5 minutes, check to make sure there are no duplicate leads that are logging the activity instead. If you need further assistance, please contact Marketo Support.

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.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Marketo Champion Program

Backward Progression Status

Find A Marketo Campaign ID

Is My Campaign Running?

Distribute Your Leads Round Robin or Randomly

Customer User Guide - Marketo Customer Support Links

Head Start feature Q&A

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

Marketo Does Not See an "Opened Email" Activity

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