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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 Form in Design Studio will not convert the time format upon language selection. English form with date format dd/mm/yyyy This is a article attached image Below is a form using settings with form language selecting German. The date format remains the same "dd/mm/yyyy" when the expected value should be "tt/mm/jjjj" as per language date format This is a article attached image Environment Marketo forms and common web browsers such as Chrome, Opera, Firefox. Root Cause This behaviour is related to the browser language settings. It automatically translates the date in the format of the selected language in the browser. Example of the same form with different browser language selected, the date format is changed by the browser This is a article attached image This is a article attached image

Issue When searching or grouping a list of leads based on email address filter ‘Contains’ @ sign, you may encountered the different numbers in the ‘People’ tab (result). Environment This behaviour is specific to the email filter as it uses two main indexes; we’ll call them Index 1 and Index 2 when using the contains/not contains operator. Index 1 searches for the entire email address value from beginning to end. This Index is used when the @ character is not included in the list of values. Index 2 searches only for the domain half of the address, which comes after the @ symbol. This Index is used when the @ character is included in the list of values. Solution A suggestion is to create a smart list with two Email Address filters wherein you will have all the ones that do not have the '@' symbol, and for the other, you will include the '@' symbol for the email address and use the logic as 'Any'. That would give you the preferred number of leads in your smart list. Root Cause Marketo database searches for email domains in a way that when using the 'contains' keyword in the 'Email Address' filter, you must make sure that if you are using the '@' symbol in your list of domains that all email domains contain this. If you want to filter for email domains that do not include the '@' symbol, you must make sure that no email domains in your list use the '@' symbol. This behaviour happens when the indexing of the database and the rules that apply to the contains operator.

Issue Sometimes, you may receive an auto response from an email that has been sent through a batch campaign. The auto response email will not show the lead's email address instead it does contain the HTML of the email along with the Marketo decorated link. Is there a way to decipher this to determine which lead record this corresponds to? Solution You could try opening a new browser window and either clear your cookies first or use the browser's private browsing feature (makes a cookie sandbox) so you don't confuse Marketo and tie that person's lead to you by accident. Anyways, in your cookie-free browser, click the link and then go to a form that Marketo prefills for you and you may see the email address that was originally targeted.

Issue You want to delete an Email Template but that template was used to create existing emails in your instance. Solution It is not possible to delete an Email Template that is in use by emails in your Marketo instance, even if those emails are not approved. If you wish to delete the template, you will need to first delete the emails that use it. You can find these in the Used By tab in the template's information. Alternately, you can break the connection between the email and the template, which would allow you to keep the email but delete the template.

Issue The deep link in a Marketo email does not redirect to the designated App. Solution By design in Marketo, when tracking is enabled for a link, the link will be wrapped with a tracking link like 'http://test.website.com/[unique sequence of characters]'. So when a tracked link is clicked, the link 'http://test.website.com/[unique sequence of characters]' is first loaded in a browser then redirects to the actual link in the same browser. Therefore, as some deep link configuration can depend on the actual link first loading, a tracked link in Marketo does not redirect to the App. One workaround here is to disable Marketo tracking link so that the deep link will redirect to the App. However, the trade-off of this is that the click link activity will not be recorded in Marketo.

Issue Issue Description Marketo allows you to upload any file type to your instance (100MB or less) but these files don't always download automatically or open in a new browser tab or window consistently between users. Solution Issue Resolution Marketo's servers are not configured to force a download, so any desired effect is up to the user and/or utilizing custom code to achieve that effect. How a file is handled or displayed is largely up to the browser and you will need to test whether your specific desired outcome is possible. Keep in mind, this may vary by file type and file size and may not be feasible.

Issue Sometimes, you may notice that editing the text version also affects the HTML version of the email. Is there a way to edit the text version without the same edits occurring to the HTML version? Solution Changes to TEXT never apply to the HTML version. It's likely because when you "save" an element, it will add the "root block element" to the HTML side if one isn't present. So, your HTML is probably not handling it correctly. You can change the "root block element" to none in the Admin > Email > Editor Settings dialog. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Using+the+Rich+Text+Editor

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

Any emails being sent as part of 'Forward to Friend' will create that user as a new lead (provided that the lead does not already exist in Marketo). When leads are created in Marketo via the 'Forward to Friend' feature, Marketo automatically unsubscribes the lead records in order to protect our global customers from anti-spam laws. This is because a lead being sent a forwarded email doesn't qualify as opting in to a mailing list and also prevents them from getting any other emails by accident.

Issue What happens if you log off (close) Marketo when importing a large amount of data through list import? Will it be processed or resume when you log back in? Solution It will keep running if you log off. Next time when you have a large list to import, we would recommend sending a notification to yourself. There is a little box you can put your email address in right when you start the import, it will email you when the import is done.

Issue Leads with the same first and last name are not showing up in the Possible Duplicates list. Solution For leads to be in Possible Duplicates, they need to have the same email address which is the unique identifier in Marketo. This is the only matching that Marketo does. If the first and last name are the same and one is missing the email address or has a different email address, Marketo will not recognize this as a duplicate.

Issue Would a requested campaign via API show in activity log if filtered? Ex: You request a campaign, and the lead does not qualify due to a filter. Will the activity log show the request occurring? Solution Yes, the request will show no matter if the lead runs through the flow or not. The request campaign action will be recorded, but the lead will not go through the flow steps if they do not meet the requested campaign's Smart List requirements.

Issue How to re-subscribe records who are already unsubscribed. Solution Once the person is willing to resubscribe to receive your emails, either of the following can be done: Smart Campaign: Change Data Value of "unsubscribed" to false.You can either use a Smart Campaign to execute this flow or can just go with single flow action ( select the lead, Person actions > Marketing > Change Data value; Attribute: Unsubscribed, New Value: False.) You can manually change unsubscribe from True to False. To do this, go to Lead database, click on the lead ( whom you need to unsubscribe), go to lead Info tab, look for unsubscribe field , remove the tick or check off the unsubscribe field checkbox.

Issue After deleting a lead or contact in Salesforce that has been synced to Marketo as a person record, attempting to merge that synced Person record with another Person record in Marketo keeps failing. Solution When a merge is performed in Marketo, the Marketo Sync User will first automatically attempt to merge the associated records in Salesforce. If the records have been deleted in Salesforce this attempt to merge the records in Salesforce will fail, meaning that the rest of the merge operation will fail in Marketo. To complete this merge, the best option is to perform the merge through the API. The Merge Leads endpoint allows you to skip the automatic Salesforce merge attempt that will always run when performing the merge through the Marketo UI. Marketo support does not troubleshoot or write custom API calls like this, so it is best to work with your in-house developer or IT staff to create these API calls. http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#!/Leads/mergeLeadsUsingPOST

Issue You have Workspaces and Partitions in your instance, and a static list that used to contain certain leads is now missing those leads. The leads still exist in the database and there is no "Remove from List" activity in the Activity History for the affected leads. Solution This can happen when the workspace that contains the static list no longer has visibility to the partition that the lead record is located in. The lead may have been moved to a different partition, or the partitions that are accessible to the workspace may have been changed. To confirm whether this is the case, do the following Go to Admin > Workspaces & Partitions and locate the workspace that contains the static list Confirm which partitions are accessible to that workspace Go to the lead record of one of the leads that was in the static list before but is not now. See which partition the lead is in currently. If the lead's partition is not accessible to the static lists's workspace, the lead will not show up in the static list.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Editing the Email Header

Translation of date format in Marketo form

Leads Discrepancy When Filtering Email Address Contains ‘@‘ In Smart Lists

Determine Lead Record Using a Decorated Email Link

Deleting an Email Template That Is Used by Emails in Your Instance

Customizing Forward to a Friend Emails

Deep Links in Emails Do Not Take Lead to App

CSV Files Hosted in Marketo’s Images and Files Don’t Always Download Automatically

Edit Text Version of the Email without Affecting HTML

Adding a Marketo Form to an Email

How to Cache or Freeze a List with Random Sample

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

Unsubscribed Occurs When ‘Forward to Friend’ Email Is Received

Log off (Close) Marketo While Importing a List

Duplicate Name Leads Not Showing Up in the “Possible Duplicates” Smart List

Unable to Delete Lead, Permission Error

Lead Shows Requested Campaign in Activity History But Did Not Go Through Campaign

How to Re-subscribe a Lead

Unable to Merge Marketo Records after the SFDC Record Synced to One of Them Was Deleted

Leads Removed From Static List Without 'Remove from List' Activity on Record