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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?

Issue Your Salesforce sync cycle is taking longer than usual. How long is too long? Solution By default, Marketo starts each Salesforce sync cycle five minutes after the previous cycle completes. Each sync cycle may take a couple of minutes or a couple of hours, depending on how much data needs to be written across. If you notice your sync cycles seem to be taking longer than usual, here are some things to check. Have you done a large update recently? This can create a backlog that can take time to work through. Have you added new fields to any of your synced Salesforce objects? The more fields on the object, the more data needs to be written across, extending the sync cycle. If you would like to streamline your Salesforce sync, do an audit in Salesforce of fields visible to the Marketo Sync User. If there are any fields that are not used in Marketo, remove visibility to them so Marketo does not waste time syncing them.

This is working as expected. The Parent Company Name field gets its value set from a different process and not via the SFDC Synch. SFDC and Marketo Engage both have a Parent Account ID field in the Account Object (Company Object in Marketo). If there is a parent account ID in that field, then the value of that field is automatically populated via a reference to the other Account Record. Since Company in Marketo is mapped to Name (SFDC Account) whenever that value is updated it will be reflected in Marketo. Example: Account ID 1 has a Parent Account ID of 2. They both have records in the same Account table. If the Name is changed of the Parent Account it is automatically reflected in any child accounts as the Parent Account Name is just a reference.

Issue If a record which is in a Marketo Campaign Wait Step and is merged into another record, does the winner of the merge continue through the flow? Solution Winner of the merge will continue through the Campaign flow and complete the remaining steps. To prevent this behavior, remove the record from Campaign using the 'Remove From Flow' step. Environment Records merged in Marketo Records merged in SFDC

Issue Does applying a permission set to the Marketo Sync User in Salesforce suffice for limiting the number of fields to sync from Salesforce to Marketo? or will the profile need to be updated directly? Solution In order to limit the visibility of fields for the Marketo Sync User in Salesforce, the profile will need to be directly edited (example: Add an Existing Salesforce Field to the Marketo Sync - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation) Root Cause Since the profile has access to a field, the Marketo Sync User will still have access to the field even though a permission set applied to the profile does not have access to the same field. Environment Salesforce Sync Marketo Sync User Permission Set SFDC

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 Error "API is not enabled for this Organization or Partner" occurs during Marketo - Salesforce integration. Solution This is a Salesforce generated error and indicates that API access is not available in your SFDC instance. For more information, see this Salesforce documentation: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/sforce_api_calls_concepts_core_data_objects.htm . To resolve this, contact Salesforce to enable API access.

Issue Marketo program Members are taking a long time to get updated in SFDC Campaigns. Solution The Marketo Program to Campaign sync is not real time and will take time to update. The feature is dependent on the Marketo to SFDC background bi-directional sync. Marketo will generally sync SFDC and Marketo objects in the following order: Lead Account Contact User Task Opportunity Opportunity Contact Role Campaign Campaign Member Campaign Member Status As per the order, Campaign related objects are towards the bottom of the list. This means that all objects above it are synced first, and if there are any backlogs on those objects, the Campaign objects can queue up and cause delays.

This is a article attached image Upon signing a contract with Marketo you are provisioned a Marketo instance and a Support Service. There are four different types of Support Services which are available to meet different customer support needs: Online (Legacy) Business or PREMIER SUPPORT BUSINESS (Legacy) Premier or PREMIER SUPPORT ENTERPRISE (Legacy) Elite or PREMIER SUPPORT ELITE Each Support Service has a different Service Level Target (SLT). An SLT is the amount of time Marketo Support targets to make first contact with you after a support case has been submitted. SLTs differ for each Support Service and priority level. Priority levels range from Priority P1 to Priority P4. Here are the SLTs and priority levels for each Support Service: Priority Online (Legacy) Business PREMIER SUPPORT BUSINESS (Legacy) Premier PREMIER SUPPORT ENTERPRISE (Legacy) Elite PREMIER SUPPORT ELITE P1 1 hour 1 hour 1 hour 30 minutes 30 minutes 30 minutes 15 minutes P2 4 hours 3 hours 2 hours 2 hours 1 hour 2 hours 30 minutes P3 6 hours 5 hours 4 hours 4 hours 2 hours 2 hours 1 hour P4 3 days 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day 1 day Here are the descriptions for each priority level: Priority Description P1 Mission Critical: Core business function down or potential loss of mission critical data P2 Urgent: Major feature or workflow is not functioning. Mission critical workflow and majority of user community is not blocked P3 Important: Normal usability or task completion is impacted but functional, or workaround is available P4 Minor: Minor issue requiring a correction. Normal workflow is not impacted Find more information About Support here!

Summary Marketo-only records must be manually synced, become a member of a default-program, encounter a Salesforce flow step in order to sync with Salesforce. Issue Records are in the Marketo database but are not syncing over to Salesforce automatically like I thought they would. Solution The sync between Marketo and Salesforce is bi-directional. However, in order for a record to be synced, one of the following conditions must be met: The record becomes a member of a program which is synced to a Salesforce campaign. This occurs when the background sync is used to keep members of a Salesforce campaign in sync with a Marketo Program status. This can easily be verified by navigating to the program and looking at the summary view. More information on this feature can be found here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Sync+an+SFDC+Campaign+with+a+Program https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/SFDC+Sync%3A+Campaign+Sync The record encounters an SFDC flow step. Any time a record encounters a Salesforce related flow step in a smart campaign, this will cause the record to sync with Salesforce. Some of these flow steps have other implied actions, which you can read about here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Implied+Salesforce+Actions The record is manually synced to Salesforce through a single-flow action. This is an intentional user action. It can only occur when you find the record in your database or in the people tab of a smart list and select the option from the 'Person Actions' menu. More on how to do this can be found in this document: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Run+a+Single+Flow+Step+from+a+Smart+List Root Cause Records had not encountered SFDC flow steps, become members of a program synced with a Salesforce campaign and hat not been manually synced to Salesforce. Environment Marketo with the built-in integration with Salesforce

Issue Description: Salesforce refreshed your sandbox and it no longer syncs with Marketo Issue Resolution: As a safety precaution, once an instance of Salesforce is synced up with Marketo, we no longer allow the user to sync this particular instance of Marketo with any other instance of Salesforce. When Salesforce does a “refresh” of your sandbox, they are actually canceling your old sandbox account and creating a new account and pulling fresh data from your production. This means the refreshed sandbox is actually a different account and has a new OrgID. Marketo Support can assist by unlocking your Marketo sandbox to be synced up with a refreshed Salesforce sandbox. If you run into this scenario, please create a support ticket requesting that we enable the reset of the OrgID for your SFDC sandbox.

When you ask Marketo to add a Salesforce contact to a lead queue, Marketo creates a duplicate lead in Salesforce and adds that to the queue instead. The reason why Marketo creates a duplicate is because Salesforce queues can only have leads in them, not contacts. If you try to add a contact to a queue, Marketo can either do nothing or create a duplicate lead and add that to the queue. We opted for the duplicate. If you want to prevent this behavior in your campaigns, use a filter on "SFDC Type is Lead" to limit the action to only leads

Say you want to keep specific Salesforce fields or records from syncing into Marketo. You can use Salesforce Profiles to restrict access to that data. In short, Marketo will only sync fields and records that are visible to the sync account in Salesforce. If you don't want records or fields brought into Marketo, use the record- and field-level permissions to prevent the sync account from seeing them. A few notes before you begin... Depending on your version of Salesforce, you may not be able to change these settings. For example, field-level security is available only in Enterprise and Unlimited editions. This will require you to make changes in Salesforce on the account you use to sync with Marketo. If this account is also used by anyone else, these changes will impact that person's view in Salesforce too. You need administrator access in Salesforce to make these changes. If you hide a field in Salesforce that has already been synced to Marketo, it will still display in the Marketo user interface until you hide it with the Field Management tool. Even though you'll still see the field in Marketo, changes to that field will not get pushed to Salesforce.

Issue When a Marketo field is synced to a SFDC field with a picklist, that picklist will be synced to Marketo when the field is added to a Marketo form. The values section of the field in the form will show the values from SFDC. However this does not occur with the standard state field in Marketo. Solution The state field's form picklist is not updated because it is automatically populated with the 50 US states. To get around this, you can either manually update the values in the picklist in the form, or you can use a custom Marketo field. This field can be remapped to the state field in salesforce with assistance from support.

Issue A lot of people suddenly synced from Salesforce to Marketo. They have been in SFDC for a long time, so you're wondering why they suddenly synced. Solution People sync from Salesforce for a number of reasons. If they aren't new leads, then they probably met some criteria that caused them to be visible to the Marketo Sync User and sync down. One thing to keep in mind is that if the visibility rules change, Marketo won't actually see those people until a field that Marketo can see changes. Marketo looks at the "sysmodtime" stamp on a record. This indicates the last time a record was modified. If the record was changed since the last time the sync ran, then Marketo updates the record on the Marketo and SFDC side with the newest information. There have been cases where the visibility rules changed, but the new records that Marketo could see weren't updated for a considerable period of time. (This could be as long as years.) However, if something eventually changed and updated the sysmodtime, these leads would all sync to Marketo. The change can be anything, but if it's a large number of people, it's frequently a change on the Account object, which then filters down to the Contacts and Leads. If you're still unsure why a large number of people have synced to Marketo, the first thing to look at is what information changed, since Marketo only syncs people when they are updated with new information.

Issue Leads are not syncing from SFDC to Marketo after the sync user has gained access to them. Solution Make a change to the lead records to queue them to sync. SFDC has permissions that allow specific users to access some leads but not others. Your Marketo SFDC sync user is a user that can have this setting applied. The sync user can also have that restriction removed to allow access to those leads. When Marketo checks Salesforce for people to update, it is looking for leads who have had record updates since the last sync. Changing visibility rules in SFDC to allow the sync user access to those leads does not update the records themselves, only the accessibility to those leads by the sync user. This means that if the sync user couldn't access the leads before but now can, they still won't sync to Marketo until they have a field update. You can change a field value, but another option is to run the Data Loader in SFDC for those affected leads. That will create a new modification indicator, which will trigger Marketo to sync those records down.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Salesforce Sync Cycles Taking Longer than Usual

Parent Company Name display SFDC data when not mapped

What Happens to Merged Leads in Campaign Wait Steps?

Limit Salesforce fields synced to Marketo

Customer User Guide - Marketo Customer Support Links

How to Export Salesforce Mapped Fields

Marketo Running Slow

Contact Showing Opportunity Role But No Opportunity

Can You Sync Multiple Marketo Programs to a Single Salesforce Campaign?

SFDC Integration Error: API Is Not Enabled for This Organization or Partner

Delay in Sync between Marketo Program Members and SFDC Campaign

Service Level Targets (SLT)

Records not syncing to Salesforce

Salesforce Refreshed My Sandbox and the Sync with Marketo Is Now Broken

Adding a Contact to a Salesforce Queue Creates a Duplicate Lead

Keep SFDC Fields or Records Out of Marketo

State field not pulling picklist from SFDC

Marketo Program/Salesforce Campaign Status Mismatch

Large Influx of Records Syncing From SFDC to Marketo

Leads Not Syncing from SFDC to Marketo