Knowledgebase

Featured article

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 How do the links (both Marketo and Non-Marketo) populate in the dropdown of Visited Web Page trigger or filter? Solution The drop-down shows a limited number of options. These links are fetched from any of your leads' activity logs. The values in the dropdown of the "Visited Web Page" will show if there is any lead who visited a webpage and this webpage or link is stored in the activity log of the email (may be in past). If the expected webpage doesn't show up in the dropdown list, first try typing it in and letting the autocomplete offer the URL. If you type it in and it still doesn't show as an option, then none of the leads have visited that page at least once. You can create a test lead for yourself and visit the desired webpage to get this added in the dropdown.

Issue A recent email send resulted in a number of leads specifically blocked by Communication Limits, as seen within the Results or Lead Activity Log. What are the re-sending options? Solution The Marketo Application does not offer any automatic re-sending/rescheduling functions within the campaign. If communication limits are low, and records are blocked from being sent emails, you may need to adjust the limits or set the necessary programs or campaigns to ignore communication limits. Enable/Disable Communication Limits in an Email Program Apply Communication Limits to Smart Campaign - you would need to undo this process in this case. Even if the records were not sent the email because of Communication Limits, they would still be made members of the campaign or program. If you were going to try to re-send these records that were blocked due to communication limits you could try this Filter combination: Member of Smart Campaign/Member of Program and Not Was Sent Email Those 2 filters will show you the members that were not sent the email, and then you could re-send them at a later time.

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

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 Duplicate records were sent an email from an Email Program. Solution While Marketo prevents sending emails to duplicate records (i.e. same email address) via the same Smart Campaign, it is possible to send an email to duplicate record when there is A/B test configured for the Email Program. Specifically, one record can be sent an email from the test send while the duplicate record can be sent the email from the winner send. For example, if there are two records for "mary@mail.com" in the audience, Mary can be sent two emails as follows: One record can be sent the email by qualifying for receiving the test from the sample size of the A/B test The other record can be sent the email by qualifying for receiving the winner from the sample size of the A/B test Note: sending the test and sending the winner utilizes individual campaigns which is why the systematic deduplication of emails within a smart campaign does not take effect for this scenario. To prevent this from occurring, exclude the duplicate records from the smart list of the email program.

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've been using Marketo for a while and have started noticing that Smart Lists take longer to process than before. There are multiple filters in your Smart List ranging from really specific attributes about a person to really broad geographical information. Solution The best performance will come when you order the smart list filters from most restrictive to least restrictive. Since your entire database is checked against the first filter, if we can narrow down the number of leads which move on to the next, there are fewer and fewer leads who qualify for each of the subsequent filters. Many times, the processing difference will be minimal. However, as your database grows, the penalty on efficiency can grow over time. If you haven't checked it out already, take a peek over at our product documentation for smart list best practices: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Best+Practices+for+Smart+Lists

Issue When using the Filter 'Member of SFDC Campaign' in the Smart List and checking the people tab to see which records are qualified, this message occurs: Could not evaluate rule 1 (SFDC Campaign 'Campaign Name' not found) Note: it may state could not evaluate rule # - # can be any number, if the filter is number 5. # will equal 5 Solution The Fix Ensure the that the SFDC Campaign being referenced in the Smart List is an ACTIVE campaign The Why This error occurs due to the SFDC Campaign not being an active campaign in SFDC. You may be wondering "Then why can I select the SFDC campaign in the drop down?" This is because the Smart List Filter specifically 'Member of SFDC Campaign' similar to 'Has Opportunity' filter reference a backend table in Marketo. This backend table is updated when a SFDC Campaign is removed or renamed. Therefore, Marketo does not directly perform an API call to check if the campaign is selectable, but rather uses the backend table as reference. One way to check in Marketo if the SFDC Campaign is active is to check the 'Added to SFDC Campaign' Trigger in a Smart Campaign's Smart List as that dropdown will only show active campaigns.

Issue Description Customers based in our Sydney datacenter experienced a service issue which caused an intermittent disruption in email sends beginning 10:30 AM AEST local time on November 12, 2018. This issue was resolved at 1:00 pm AEST and all emails are now sending normally. No customers outside of the Sydney datacenter were impacted. During the impacted time frame, some email sends were lost and will not be delivered. The issue occurred intermittently during the affected time, so some emails were sent successfully, while others were not. This documentation provides details on how to identify the impacted lead records. Identifying Affected Leads Symptoms All lead records that were sent emails during the impacted time will show an "Email Sent" activity (as per normal behavior) Leads that were not impacted and successfully had emails sent will show the corresponding "Email Delivered" or "Email Bounced" activities (as per normal behavior) However, the impacted leads that emails did not send to will NOT have any "Email Delivered" or "Email Bounced" activity. They will show the "Email Sent" activity, but there will not be any corresponding activity to indicate what the result was - Delivered or Bounced. The emails that failed to send will not be retried. Leads impacted by this service issue will not receive the email unless customers choose to re-send it through another Campaign or Email Program send. Using Smart Lists to Identify Leads To identify affected leads create the following Smart List: Filter logic: ALL filters Flow Step #1: Was Sent Email Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #2: Not Was Delivered Email Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #3: Not Email Bounced Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #4: Not Email Bounced Soft Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Once complete, your Smart List will look like this: The lead records returned by this Smart List will be the impacted records that did not have emails sent during the affected time frame. *NOTE: In a limited number of circumstances, there is a possibility that a very small number of leads did not have the "Email Sent" activity logged. This will be an uncommon occurrence, if it happens at all. Who This Solution Applies To Customers in the Sydney Datacenter. No customers whose Marketo instances are located in other datacenters are impacted in any way. Where to get additional help If you would like any additional help please contact Marketo Support.

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 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 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 You have a Smart List that should exclude a group of leads from a campaign, but they still show up in the Qualified Leads list Solution Check the filter logic for your Smart Lampaign. "Or" logic allows leads that only qualify for some but not all of the filters to be included in the membership. For example, you could have a Smart List with the following filters. SFDC Type = Contacts Unsubscribed = False (You are trying to exclude unsubscribed leads) Visited Webpage - http://www.company.com/products If you use the following Advanced logic - "(1 or 2) and 3" - you will still have unsubscribed leads showing up in the list because they are Contacts, and the logic says they can be either Contacts or Unsubscribed = False. They only need to satisfy one of the two filters to qualify, and an unsubscribed Contact would go through. There is a blog post that goes into more detail on this. Smart List Logic - How many people do you want in your club?

Issue Are Smart List filters that accept text values case-sensitive (e.g. First Name, Last Name)? Solution Smart list filters are NOT case-sensitive. For example: If you use the smart list filter 'First Name is John', it will return leads with First Name 'John' or 'john' with a lower case 'j' Vice versa: If you use the smart list filter 'First Name is john', it will return leads with First Name 'john' or 'John' with an upper case 'j'

Issue How deleting or archiving programs will affect the Lead field: Acquisition Program. Solution If you delete a Marketo Program, the field will append a "deleted" at the end of the Program Name. For example, if the Program Name was "July 2016 newsletter" for Acquisition Program, after deleting the Program, the field value would change to: "July 2016 newsletter - deleted (####)". The numbers represent an activity ID on the backend. Note: Archiving Programs does not affect the Acquisition Program.

Issue Leads that qualify for a Smart Campaign run through the flow with a Change Data Value flow step, but some leads don't have a data value changed, while other flow steps still apply. It seems that those leads have just skipped the Change Data Value step and went right on to the next flow step. This is a article attached image This is a article attached image Solution If the new value for the Change Data Value is exactly the same as the current value in the lead record, Marketo will skip that flow step. There won't be an activity entry in the activity log or results tab because the action did not actually happen. Example Say you had a field called Favorite Sport and a lead that already has the value of "Football" in that field on their record. This is a article attached image The flow step is Change Data Value: Attribute: Favorite Sport New Value: Football This is a article attached image In this example, a lead will run that through flow step, but since the value did not change Marketo will just move on to the next flow step.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Links/URL Showing in Visited Web Page Trigger Drop-Down

Re-Sending Emails 'Blocked By Communication Limits'

Newly Created Records from On24 Missing First/Last Name

Choices Skipped in Campaign Triggered by New Person Creation

Duplicate Records Were Both Sent an Email from an Email Program

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

Email Dashboard not Displaying Accurate Data

Does the Order of Smart List Filters Matter?

Smart List Error – Could Not Evaluate Rule 1 (SFDC Campaign ‘Campaign Name’ Not Found)

Sydney Datacenter Email Send Disruption 11/12/2018

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

Copying Data from One Field to Another

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

Smart List Is including Leads That Should Be Excluded

Boolean Tokens in Create Task and Change Data Value Cause Flow Step to be Skipped

Smart Campaign Returns N/A Existing People When Viewing the Leads Affected

Smart List Filters Case-Sensitivity

How to Filter for Device and Platform Information in "Opened Email" Smart List

Program Acquisition When Deleting and Archiving Programs

Leads Skipping Change Data Value Flow Steps