Your Achievements

0% to

Next /

to gain points, level up, and earn exciting badges like the new !

View All Badges

Open Alert Bar

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

Featured article

(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 You want to set a field such as "Country" to be required on a list import. Solution You cannot require a field to be included on a list import. To see any leads imported recently with blank values you can setup a Smart List with a subscription Filters -- Lead was created Source Type - Import [Field you are wanting to watch] is Empty You could setup a daily subscription to get the leads who qualify and then correct those leads as needed.

Issue You receive a message that the partition cannot be deleted because it is not empty, even though there are 0 leads in the partition. Solution Marketo will give you this error message when you have a partition with anonymous leads in it. Even if you move all known leads from a partition, there will still be hidden anonymous leads. This will prevent you from deleting the partition. Contact Marketo Support to have the anonymous leads removed from the partition so that you can delete it.

Issue You have an unsubscribe option in your email preference center but would like to allow people to re-subscribe as well. Solution Depending on your preference center set up, setting up the re-subscribe choices will vary a bit. However, on the back end, it is pretty simple. On the preference center form, create one or more fields that the customer can check to resubscribe. In Marketo, create a Smart Campaign. The trigger will be Data Value Change for the field(s) you set up for re-subscribe. The flow will be Change Data Value, attribute: Unsubscribed, new value is 'False'. This should allow Marketo to start sending emails to that lead again.

Issue You see that a lead has an unusually high amount of Clicked Link activity for a particular email after delivery. Solution There can be a couple reasons for this. If you see that all links in the email are being clicked immediately upon delivery, it is likely that the lead's email security software is link-testing to guard against phishing or malicious links. However, if you see an unusually large number of link clicks over the course of a day or two, it may be that the lead forwarded the email to other people who clicked on the links. Since the tracking links are specific to the lead who was sent the original email, if the email is forwarded to other people, their clicks will be recorded under the initial lead's activity history. Marketo does not have a way to confirm this is the case, but if you open the Click Link activities in the leads Activity Log and look at the details, you may see the User Agent (which indicates the operating system and client software used to display the email) is different for each click. If you see a variety of different user agents in the details, it is likely the email is being opened and clicked by different people who were forwarded the email.

Issue Acquisition Program is not being assigned when a new lead is created by filling out a form associated with a program. Environment Form embedded in a non-Marketo web page Solution In order for a program to be assigned as the acquisition program, the form and landing page both have to be child assets of the program. If the form is embedded on an external page, Marketo has no way to associate the form fill out with that specific program. You can either use a trigger campaign that looks for the form fill out and assigns the Acquisition Program through a Data Value Change flow step, or put the form on a Marketo landing page within the program.

Issue You want to run a report that will show you which leads/people clicked on links within a specific email. Solution The Email Performance report will show click rate and what links are in emails, but not which specific leads leads clicked on a link. To see that, you can instead create a Smart List. Using the filter of "Clicked Link in Email," you can then pick the desired email and the results of the Smart List will show you which leads clicked a link in the desired email.

Double opt-in is the gold standard of email permission. Also known as confirmed opt-in or COI, this practice is where a person fills out an opt-in form and is then sent an email and must click a confirmation message before they are added to the mailing list. Here are some great reasons to use double opt-in: Protects against typos and bots Protects against spamtraps Reduces bounce rates, improves deliverability Required in some regions Increases engagement rates If you'd like to set up double opt-in with Marketo you can do this with the use of the Marketing Suspended function. Marketing Suspended is a status that is functionally equivalent to Unsubscribe - Marketo will not send these leads marketing emails, but will send them operational emails. You'll need an opt-in form and a pair of trigger campaigns. First, set up a trigger campaign such that, when the form is filled out, the flow has a Change Data Value to mark the lead as Marketing Suspended, and then a Send Email step to send an operational email that you will use to confirm their request to join your mailing list. Your confirmation email should be short and to the point, and make sure to set it as an operational email. We recommend that it is clearly branded, use a simple subject line such as "Confirm Your Request to Join Our Mailing List" or similar, and include a link within to a simple confirmation landing page. Set a second trigger campaign such that whenever someone clicks the confirmation link to the confirmation landing page, the flow will change data value Marketing Suspended new value is false. A follow up flow should be set up that if the recipient doesn't activate the link in the confirmation email the address is either deleted or set to Blacklist within the database after a reasonable timeframe, usually 2 weeks. The Blacklist status will ensure that no email is set to that lead until they have completed the subscription process. This prevents future operational emails from being sent to this email address unintentionally. That's it! Now, when someone fills out your opt-in form, they will be set to Marketing Suspended until they click the confirmation link in your operational confirmation email. You'll be well on your way to increasing the quality of leads on your mailing list by implementing this simple process.

Issue You may be wondering if it is possible to edit or rename your custom fields in Marketo. Solution Yes, editing or renaming your custom fields in Marketo is possible. You can do so by navigating to "Admin" > "Field Management" > Click on the field on the right-hand side field list > click on the name of the field in the centre canvas (UI) then edit. Your fields would need to be unused by any asset in order for you to edit/rename them.

Issue Attempting to use Champion/Challenger tests in nested programs within engagement programs fails to run test. Solution Champion/Challenger email tests must be inserted directly within the email stream as an asset. The testing functionality is based on being triggered which is the process of a stream content cast. When the email is nested in a smart campaign within a program, this campaign executes as a batch campaign and will see inconsistent behavior for Champion/Challenger testing.

Issue You see one value for Acquisition Program and a different value for Acquired By. What do they mean and how are they different? Solution Acquired By specifically means 'this program was responsible for creating the lead record'. Acquisition Program is an attribute that you are able to change, but Acquired By is something controlled by the system that designates when that program is directly responsible for creating the record. For example, if you had an SFDC Campaign that was synced to a Marketo program, and you added a lead to that Campaign, the lead would be synced down to the Marketo program. You could then use a Smart Campaign to set the value for Acquisition Program. However, the program would not receive Acquired By credit because the lead came from Salesforce and not from the program directly.

Issue Issue Description In a Smart Campaign Results section, there are activities showing that are not campaign flow steps. Solution Issue Resolution Marketo will display any related activities that were a result of the campaign flow steps in the Results For example, if a campaign syncs a record to the CRM, any associated 'change data value' activities from the sync will be written in the Campaign Results.

Issue You receive a DMARC report from an ISP saying that your email failed to pass the SPF alignment check, but when you check your SPF listing in Admin > Email > SPF/DKIM, SPF is verified. Solution The SPF record in Admin > Email > SPF/DKIM is tied to your FROM domain. DMARC alignment (using SPF) aligns the domain in the FROM address with the domain in the “return-path” address. This “return-path” address, usually using a '*.mktomail.com' domain, is generally unseen by recipients and directs email bounces and errors back to Marketo for processing. Failed DMARC alignment, between these two domains, is what is triggering the failure your DMARC reporting. DMARC compliance requires EITHER DKIM or SPF compliance, not both in most cases. This article reviews the two methods available for DMARC alignment - https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-1202-technical-tip-set-up-dmarc-verified-domains-in-a-few-easy-steps Having DKIM DMARC alignment may be enough and you may not need to rely on full SPF DMARC alignment. In order to set up SPF DMARC alignment, Branded Return-Path will allow you to align the “return-path” domain with your sending FROM address domain. If you have a dedicated IP on the current pricing plan or are on the Trusted IP range, Marketo can brand your return path at no additional charge. If you have a legacy Silver Dedicated IP package, or are on the Shared IP range, you can purchase the Branded Return Path as an add-on. More technical info can be found here: What is DMARC? - https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-1097 https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-5910-branded-envelopefrom-on-shared-or-trusted-ips https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-5951-branded-envelopefrom-on-dedicated-ips

Issue Is to possible to set up a distribution list (for internal employees) in Marketo? Solution There is no such feature called "Distribution list" in Marketo. An email can be sent to people only of they are part of your lead database. Alternate Workaround: You can create a excel sheet for your internal employees with their email addresses and import them into a Marketo static list. You can refer this list in your smart campaign whenever you would need to send a communication email. Note: Mark the email you send as "Operational" to ensure that it reaches all the people in the imported list.

Issue Issue Description Person appears to have changed Segment, but there is no activity for that 'Change Segment' recorded in the Activity Log. Segmentation was not recently re-approved, so this would not account for the behavior we are seeing in other circumstances. Segmentations Not Writing Change Activities However, the record was recently converted from a Lead to a Contact in the CRM. Solution Issue Resolution Upon Lead conversion to Contact in Salesforce, an "initial" segmentation process for that Contact is computed. During these "initial" segmentation computations, in a manner similar to when a person is initially created in Marketo, no activity is recorded in the record's Activity Log.

Issue You are trying to manually edit a lead record to remove the value of the Email field but the change doesn't save. Solution Marketo enforces this as a required field for deduplication purposes and won't allow a direct manual edit as a preventative measure. Removing the field can create duplicates, so it's generally recommended that instead of removing the field you maintain the record in your CRM or mark this record as marketing suspended to avoid inadvertent communications. However, if you need to remove the value there are two workarounds to this issue. 1) Create a smart campaign with smart list criteria that isolates that specific lead record, with a Change Data Value flow step. Specify Email as the attribute and the New Value as NULL. This will clear out the value for that field. 2) You can remove the email address from that record in your CRM. Marketo treats your CRM as the source of authority, so removing that value in your CRM will sync down to Marketo during the next sync cycle.

Issue How "And/Or" logic is applied to constraints in Smart List filters and triggers. Solution In Smart List filters, additional constraints act as "and" logic. Example: Was Sent: [this email asset] between this date range min number of times: 2 will function as Was Sent: [this email asset] -and- between this date range -and- min number of times: 2 When you have multiple values inside a single constraint, that is "or" logic. Was Sent: [this email asset OR that email asset] There is not a way to change the logic of constraints, so if you wish to have some sort of 'Or' between constraints then you would have to use multiple filters with 'OR logic between them.

Issue You want to add multiple values to a Smart List filter as described here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Add+Multiple+Values+to+a+Smart+List+Filter . However, when you go to do so for a field that has a type of "Text" you are not able to add multiple values. Solution This is expected behavior for Marketo Text fields. As a workaround, you can add the same filter to the Smart List multiple times, one for each value you want included.

Issue: When selecting multiple values in a string field, it only shows 300 entries in the 'Select...' window. This is a article attached image NOTE: This is expected behavior, we have limited the number of records to show to 300. Workaround: If there is a value that is not in the 'Selected Values' window, you will need to start typing in the 'Select...'field so the autosuggest will start to filter the values, whatever value that is not already selected in the 'Selected Values'window, will show up in the 'Select...' window.

Issue When you send an email that was cloned from a previous campaign and updated, the sent email shows the old content rather than the new content. Solution This can be caused by Dynamic Content in the email. If you clone an email with Dynamic Content but only update the default content, then the old content will be sent to leads who are not part of the default segmentation. Open the email in the editor and see what email elements are displayed in the Dynamic tab. Check the different segments in the editor and see which ones have the old content. You can update the dynamic content for each segment or simply make the content static, which will make the email use the default content for all leads.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Setting a Field to Be Required on List Import

Unable to Delete an Empty Lead Partition

How to Allow Leads to Re-Subscribe in Your Email Preference Center

Lead Record Shows an Unusually Large Number of Link Clicks for an Email

Acquisition Program Not Being Assigned after Filling Out a Form

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

How to See Who Clicked a Link in an Email

How to Set Up Double Opt-In (COI)

Modify 'Friendly name' (label) on custom fields

Champion Challenger Test in Engagement Programs

Acquisition Program vs. Acquired By and What They Mean

Non-Campaign Activities Shown in Campaign Results

DMARC Report Says an Email Fails SPF but the SPF Record Shows as Verified.

Creating an Internal Distribution List

Change Segment Activity Missing For Recently Converted Contact

Cannot Manually Remove Value of Email Field

And/Or Logic in Trigger and Filter Constraints

Adding Multiple Values to a Smart List Filter Using a "Text" Type Field

Autosuggest in the Multiple Value Chooser Is Only Showing 300 Entries

Cloned Email Showing New Content But Sending Old Content