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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 Activity History in Saleforce shows this message: [Email details are being uploaded from Marketo...please check back later] when emails are sent out from the Marketo Outlook Plugin. Solution This message is created because of insufficient privileges for the Marketo sync user inside of SFDC. There is a permission for “Edit HTML Templates” that needs to be enabled for the sync user in order to prevent this problem from occurring. Background: When you send an email using the Marketo Outlook plugin, it is sent through the user's Exchange server rather than Marketo's email servers. Many users have an email signature that is automatically added to the email. This adds additional HTML to the email, which does not match the template already in Salesforce Sales Insight. Normally, Marketo would create a new template which Salesforce could then display in a link in the Activity History. However, in this case, the Marketo sync user does not have the necessary permissions, so this error results. To fix this, enable the "Edit HTML Templates" permissions to your Marketo Sync User. Who This Solution Applies To Customer who are using Sales Insight for Salesforce and Outlook

Issue Syncing a SFDC custom field that is not on the Lead, Contact, or Account object. Solution Any custom field created in Salesforce that is not linked with Lead, Contact or Account objects will not sync to Marketo. Only the Lead, Contact and Account objects can be synced down to Marketo by default. If you would like to have any custom field synced to Marketo, it must be associated to a Lead, Contact or Account object in Salesforce. Custom Objects created in your Salesforce instance can be part of Marketo too. To use a custom object in Marketo, it must be associated to a Lead, Contact or Account object in Salesforce as well. For more information on syncing Salesforce Custom Objects, please see the documentation here: SFDC Sync: Custom Object Sync. Fields on the SFDC Custom Object do not become fields in the Marketo lead database, but can be used as filter constraints on Custom Object filters - Add/Remove Custom Object Field as Smart List/Trigger Constraints.

Issue What is the typical sync interval timing? Is there a timing difference between updates and inserts? If the change originates in SFDC vs MKTO? Solution By default the sync interval in Marketo is set to 5 minutes. This can be set to be greater than 5 minutes on request. Now this doesn't mean that Marketo will sync updates every 5 minutes, it means that there will be approximately a 5 minute wait after one sync cycle finishes and and the next sync cycle begins. The duration that an individual sync cycle will take depends on how many records for each object need to be updated/created. Remember flow actions in smart campaigns are immediate, so if you ever don't want to wait for the background sync for a specific lead or set of leads then you could always run an intimidate flow action, just bear in mind that flow actions use 1 API call per lead record whereas the background sync is much more efficient and can handle 200 records with just one API call.

Issue A record in Marketo failed to sync to Salesforce due to a Field Validation error. Errors may include the following: Failed: FIELD_INTEGRITY_EXCEPTION: INVALID_OR_NULL_FOR_RESTRICTED_PICKLIST: bad value for restricted pick list field. Solution The lead was unable to sync to Salesforce because the value for a specific required field was missing or did not match the rules Salesforce had for the data in the field. For example, the field in Salesforce could be a picklist and the value Marketo is trying to pass in the field is not in the picklist. Salesforce always requires a Last Name and a Company Name value for all records, so if your lead is missing data in these fields, the sync will fail. To resolve this, check Salesforce to see what the acceptable values are for the field specified in the error, and make sure the Marketo record has the necessary information. If you need further assistance with this, we recommend working with your SFDC Admin to determine why Salesforce is rejecting the record. This commonly happens when Country/State picklist is enabled on your SFDC instance. As a consequence, SFDC will reject any record with country/state value does not belong to the list and so you will have to make sure that countries are set correctly everywhere in Marketo, and especially: in forms in data management campaigns in imports For example, if you try to pass the value "New York" to Salesforce, it will not be accepted. Salesforce will only accept "NY". The error messages you're seeing are coming from Salesforce because the State fields have been standardized to only accept certain pick-list values. In order to get these records to sync with Salesforce you'll need to update them to have valid values. Contact your SFDC Admin to get the list of accepted values for that field and update the record in Marketo with the appropriate value that is accepted by SFDC. If you feel like pick list is not necessary on SFDC, you could just disable the state or country pick lists in SFDC by following the below document https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=admin_state_country_picklist_enable.htm&type=5 Who This Solution Applies To Customers integrated with Salesforce

Issue You may experience this error when we create campaigns in SFDC using Marketo Campaign sync through a program. Solution The error that we are receiving indicates that the User Profile that Marketo uses to log into Salesforce doesn't have permissions inside of SFDC to create campaigns. To test this, log into Salesforce using the Marketo sync credentials and try to create an SFDC campaign. If you are unable to do so, then Marketo cannot create campaigns via the sync. You would need to work with your SFDC Admin to grant the Marketo sync user permission to create campaigns in SFDC. If still there is an error, please contact the Salesforce support team, since this error is coming from Salesforce.

Issue You already have a Marketo connected to an instance of Salesforce and want to switch to a different instance of SFDC. Solution This is not possible. Once you have connected your Marketo instance to an instance of SFDC, that connection cannot be changed. If you want to connect Marketo to a different instance of SFDC, you would need to contact your Customer Success Manager to have a new Marketo instance provisioned.

Issue An update made in the CRM is taking longer than expected to sync to Marketo via the usual sync cycle. You need to avoid this for some of the data being passed between the two systems. Solution Some delay in the sync is expected. It all depends on the current sync status, as well as how much data is being synced. One possible workaround would be to use API calls to push data into Marketo immediately. To make API calls into Marketo, you'll need to do the following Create an API Only User Role Create an API Only User Create a Custom Service for Use with ReST API From there, you will be able to create API calls from your CRM and access API endpoints with this user to make updates in Marketo. This method can also be used to sync data between Marketo and unsupported or custom CRMs. Note: You will need to work with a developer to create the API calls. Marketo Support are not trained as developers, so if you need assistance creating your API calls, you will need to work with Marketo Professional Services instead.

When a Salesforce-specific flow step runs, sometimes extra steps are performed automatically. Here are the rules, so you know: These rules will apply when the lead is not currently in Salesforce.com as a contact or lead. Marketo Flow step Automatic Action Add to SFDC Campaign Sync Lead to SFDC Change Status in SFDC Campaign Sync Lead to SFDC Add to SFDC Campaign Change Owner Sync Lead to SFDC Convert Lead Sync Lead to SFDC Create Task Sync Lead to SFDC You can filter out SFDC records in a Smart List using the SFDC Type Filter with the operator set to "is not empty". All SFDC records have a value in this field.

Issue: You have a Salesforce lead field that is not currently in Marketo but you want to have in it Marketo for use. Solution: Login to Salesforce as a System Administrator user. Identify the Salesforce profile that is being used by the Marketo sync user by clicking on Setup -> Manage Users -> Users Once you have identified the Salesforce profile being used by the Marketo sync user, you will need to make the Salesforce field visible to the Salesforce profile of the Marketo sync user. You do this via "Field-Level Security" setting for the field in Salesforce. In Salesforce: Click on Your name at the top right of the screen -> Setup -> App Setup -> Customize -> Click the Salesforce object the field is under. i.e. Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities -> Fields Click on the Field Label hyperlink Click on the "Set Field-Level security" button -> check the "Visible" checkbox next to the Salesforce profile that is being used by the Marketo sync user. Only the "Visible" checkbox must be checked. The "Read Only" checkbox must be checked. In the following screenshot below, notice the different checkbox options for the "Backup User" Salesforce field. However, only 1 option combination will work correctly - i.e. the option with only the "Visible" checkbox checked. Some standard Salesforce fields even though you have correctly followed the instructions above, simply do not sync to Marketo. One example of this is the "Rating" field on the Account object.

Included in this article Overview Use Sync User Login Check Field Level Security Overview If you've ever had trouble getting a field or field value to sync between Salesforce and Marketo, the most common problem is that the Salesforce sync user doesn't have permissions to access that field. Since different users have different permissions to access fields based on their roles, not every field or record is visible to every user. However, there can be cases when a user needs access to fields which are not accessible. For example, if a program needs to be tested but the field is not accessible, or the user may have been simply missed from the permissions. In such cases, you can check whether the sync user can see that field. Use Sync User Login To find if your sync user has permissions to access the field, check the Salesforce integration ID. Navigate to Admin > Salesforce and check the Credentials. This will give you the login ID. Your Salesforce Admin should have the password for that login ID. Next, log into your CRM using those SFDC sync user credentials. Navigate to the lead/contact record. Check to see if the field shows on the lead record. If the field is not visible, that means that your sync user does not have permissions enable to access that field. Check Field Level Security If the field isn't visible, we need to check the Field Level Security for the fields. This is where the fields will be listed with checkboxes indicating whether the field is to be accessible or not. 1. Go to Setup. 2. Navigate to your Profile. 3. Go to the section “Field Permissions.” Here you’ll be able to see the fields and their corresponding permissions. Restricted permissions could be a reason why the SFDC sync user cannot see a field or record. Therefore, you may need to make changes here to allow permissions to view it.

Marketo calls to the Salesforce API During a single sync session, Marketo makes 25 API calls to check if your Salesforce objects need updating. Because your Salesforce sync happens in 5 minute intervals (default setting), each day Marketo makes 7200 API calls to your account to see if any updates are needed. If there are updates, more API calls are used to sync the information. Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, Campaigns, and Activities are synced in batches of 200 per API call. If you use a Sync Lead to SFDC or Add to Campaign flow step in trigger campaigns, each one uses at least one API call per lead; the API call happens when the lead hits that flow step (instead of waiting for the next sync). Batch campaigns can send up to 200 leads to Salesforce with 1 API call for these flow steps. Any activities you've synced from Marketo to Salesforce (like "Filled Out Form" or "Opened Email") use an extra API call per event. You can use these to estimate the number of API calls Marketo makes per day. For example, if you have 1,000 Lead and Contact updates a day and 100 Account, Opportunity, and Campaign updates, you'll use: 7200 (check for updates) + (1000 Lead updates / 200 per API call) + (1000 Contact updates / 200 per API call) + (100 Account updates / 200 per API call) + (100 Opportunity updates / 200 per API call) + (100 Campaign updates / 200 per API call) + 7200 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7213 API calls When you first sync your Salesforce account to Marketo, you'll use significantly more API calls until Marketo is up to date with your Salesforce instance. After that, you can expect the API calls to be much lower unless you make large updates to your leads (in Marketo or Salesforce) API Calls and your Salesforce edition Salesforce determines your API call limit based on the edition and licenses you have. This document from Salesforce has information on how they calculate that limit. For many Salesforce users, particularly Enterprise Edition users, the number of API calls made by Marketo is usually not a problem. If you're using a more limited edition of Salesforce or don't have many Salesforce licenses, you may hit the daily limit on your API calls. In that case, please contact Marketo Support and ask us to decrease your sync interval. At a 30 minute sync interval, Marketo uses around 1000 API calls per day, well under the limit for nearly every Salesforce edition. To see your API limit (per 24 hour period) and your current usage (for past 24 hours) in SFDC, navigate to: Setup -> Administration Setup -> Company Profile -> Company Information Look for the field called "API Requests, Last 24 Hours", which will display API usage for the past 24-hour period as well as your current 24-hour limit (in parenthesis). Order of Events during SFDC Sync Marketo will sync your SFDC and Marketo objects in the following order: Lead: synch schema Account: synch schema Contact: synch schema User: synch schema Task: synch schema Opportunity: synch schema Opportunity Contact Role: synch schema Campaign: synch schema Campaign Member: synch schema Campaign Member Status: synch schema Lead: pull conversions Account: pull deletes Account: pull updates User: pull updates Lead Queue: pull updates Lead Status: pull updates Account Type: pull updates Lead: pull deletes Contact: pull deletes Lead: pull updates Contact: pull updates Lead: push updates Contact: push updates Campaign: pull deletes Campaign Member: pull deletes Campaign Member Status: pull deletes Campaign: pull updates Campaign Member: pull updates Campaign Member Status: pull updates Opportunity: pull deletes Opportunity Contact Role: pull deletes Opportunity: pull updates Opportunity Contact Role: pull updates Event: pull updates Task: pull updates Email Template: push new Email Template: push updates Task: push new Task: push updates

Marketo has the ability to see and pull data from Salesforce Formula fields, there is however a catch which will be explained in this article. Everytime the Marketo Sync connects to Salesforce, it will scan records and look at the "SytemModStamp" (salesforce system field) for each one of them. It will compare this value with the stored value, which was pulled at the last scheduled sync. If the values match, Marketo will move on to the next record. If the values are different (new value later date than previous value), then Marketo will do a compare and contrast of all fields on that record in both systems and update the information as needed. When a normal non-formula field is updated and changed on a Lead/Contact record in SFDC, the SytemModStamp value is updated. This is how on next sync Marketo knows to do a compare/contrast check and pull updates. Formula fields do not behave the same way. A formula field is calculated based on data in fields called upon in the formula; this means that the formula field calculation itself will not update the SytemModStamp in Salesforce. Chances are you already have existing records in SFDC and Marketo. If you were to create a formula field today in your instance of SFDC and have it sync down into Marketo, the data calculated for the formula field in SFDC will not come into Marketo right away. The reason for this is, the formula field has created data based on already existing data, this does not result in a SytemModStamp change. Typically formula fields will be a calculation of data from fields which are somehow related to the lead/contact record. This means that moving forward, any change in the normal field, will result in a SytemModStamp change as well as a recalculation of the formula field. In this case, Marketo will see the updated SytemModStamp due to the normal field change. Marketo will do the compare/contrast excercise and find that the formula field also needs updating. If you create a formula field in SFDC and would like to have all the historical data for the formula field to come into Marketo, you can force an update on the records in SFDC to update the SytemModStamp. This way, on next sync, Marketo will see the formula data and pull it in. Alternatively, you can simply allow for natural SytemModStamp updates in SFDC to occur which should result in a slow trickle of historical data from SFDC into Marketo for the newly created formula field. You can only use data from a formula field in Marketo to segment data and filter. If you try to do a change data value, Marketo will accept the change, tries to sync it to Salesforce and fails to update there. Eventually the Salesforce calculated value will come back into Marketo.

The fields and records that will sync from Salesforce are defined by the permissions of the Marketo sync user. Therefore, if you want to prevent specific records or fields from syncing with Marketo, change the permissions of the sync user so they do not have access to the records and fields you do want to sync. Alternatively, you can work with Marketo Support to set up a Custom Sync Filter that will prevent records from syncing based on the value in a specified field. Restricting Leads from Syncing to SFDC With Sync Filters

Issue Users for your Marketo instance are unable to log into the instance. Solution Check your landing page URLs and email links. If these are also unavailable, your Marketo instance may have been shut off. Marketo Support can confirm whether your instance has been deactivated, but are not able to reactivate it. In this situation, please contact your Marketo Account Representative to discuss the status of the instance and regaining access.

Issue How and where to locate Salesforce ORG ID. Solution Choose one of the following options to find your Org ID: Improved Setup User Interface (Enabled) 1. Select Setup | Company Profile | Company Information. 2. In the "Organization Detail" section, your Organization ID is listed in the "Salesforce.com Organization ID" field, starting with 00Dxxx. Improved Setup User Interface (Disabled) 1. Select <YourName> | Setup | Company Profile | Company Information. 2. In the "Organization Detail" section, your Organization ID is listed in the "Salesforce.com Organization ID" field, starting with 00Dxxx. Lightning Experience 1. Click the Gear icon, then select Setup. 2. Select Settings | Company Settings | Company Information. 3. Your Organization ID is listed in the "Salesforce.com Organization ID" field, starting with 00Dxxx

Issue You come across a few leads who failed to sync to SFDC and would like to have the list of leads who faced the same issue. Solution Unfortunately Marketo doesn't have a specific type of filter to leads who failed to sync to SFDC. However if they are new leads who haven’t synced to SFDC, then you can filter them by using the filters "Person was created" and "SFDC Type" with condition "is empty". If you want to find the list of leads (previously synced to SFDC) who failed to sync among a particular group of leads, you can filter by following the below steps. 1. Create a new Boolean type field in SFDC namely "Sync Error?" and with the default value as "true". 2. Wait for the field to sync into Marketo. 3. Create a Smart Campaign to select those group of records and the flow steps to change the value of the Boolean field "Sync Error?" to ”False" and then "Sync person to SFDC". 4. Once the campaign has finished running, you will be to pull a report on SFDC on the list of leads who have the value "True" for the field "Sync Error?". It means that the value was not updated to SFDC as the record failed to sync. With this list you will be able to select the records and resolve the sync issue. You can also create a smart list of leads who were never able to sync with the following filters: Lead was synced to SFDC : Assign to : is not empty SFDC Type: is Empty

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

SFDC Activity History Shows Message: [Email Details Are Being Uploaded from Marketo…Please Check Back Later]

SFDC Activity History Shows Message: [Email Details Are Being Uploaded from Marketo…Please Check Back Later]

Syncing Custom Field Created in Salesforce Standard and Custom Objects

SFDC Sync Intervals

SalesForce Custom Object Not Visible in SalesForce Objects Sync

Record Failed to Sync to Salesforce with a Field Validation Error

SFDC Campaign Sync Error - Failed: CANNOT_INSERT_UPDATE_ACTIVATE_ENTITY: entity type cannot be inserted: Campaign

Switching the Marketo Sync to a New Salesforce Instance

Syncing Between CRM and Marketo Outside of the Sync Cycle

Implied Salesforce Actions

How to make a Salesforce field available in Marketo

How to check if an SFDC sync user can see a field

How Marketo Uses the Salesforce API

How Does Marketo See and Pull Data from Salesforce Formula Fields?

How Do I Block Certain Leads/Contacts in Salesforce from Synching into Marketo?

Unable to Access Marketo Instance

How to Locate Your Salesforce ORG ID

Find Records in Marketo That Have Not Synced to Salesforce

Filter Out the List of Leads Who Failed to Sync to SFDC

Editing SFDC Custom Objects in Marketo