Knowledgebase

A blocklist is a database that uses certain pieces of information to determine if an IP or domain is sending messages that could be considered spam. There are hundreds of blocklists out there, though only a handful of them are used widely enough to have a major impact on your email delivery rates. Blocklists are tools that are used by ISPs to inform decisions on whether or not to place a message in the end user’s inbox. If an IP or domain is on a blocklist, ISPs that use that blocklist to inform inbox decisions will not accept mail from that IP. Most blocklists are dynamic, meaning that they will delist automatically after a given period of time or when the sender’s email statistics improve. An IP will be included on a blocklist if certain criteria are met, and these criteria vary from blocklist to blocklist. Spamhaus, the world’s most well repudiated and widely used blocklist, has a great graphic that explains how their blocklist feeds information to ISPs and what happens from there. While blocklists use a number of methods to determine whether or not an IP is sending messages that could be considered spam, two of the most common are spamtraps addresses and user feedback. Spamtraps are email addresses that are not meant to receive email. Some spamtraps were created by anti-spam professionals and were never meant to receive email, while others are simply old invalid addresses that have been repurposed. You can read more about spam traps here: What Is a Spamtrap and Why Do They Matter?. Blocklists also rely heavily on feedback from users that tell them that a particular IP or sender is sending spam. We have to be strict about our Email Use and Anti-Spam Policy because in the rare event that one of our customers triggers a blocklist, any customer on the same IP range will be affected. To check if an IP is blocklisted, use this tool. If you have found that you are listed on a blocklist, please see this article, Blocklist Remediation, for a path to resolution. To learn more about specific blocklists, please visit our guide to the top blocklists, Top Blocklists – What You Need to Know.

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  The Marketo Privacy Team often recommends that our customers send a reconfirmation message to a set of their inactive leads. This process is used as both a proactive strategy to ensure good delivery rates and as a response to blocklisting issues. For more information on this overall strategy search our Resource Articles for Blocklist Remediation. At its most basic a reconfirmation message request a lead takes an action to stay on your mailing list.  If they don't take that action they will be automatically removed from the mailing list. These types of messages don't usually get a high response rate because you are sending the reconfirmation message to people who have already shown to be disengaged from your marketing. However there are instances where some reconfirmation messages get a more enthusiastic response than others so we've put together some tips for making the most out of reconfirmation. Instead of marketing your company itself think of it as though you are marketing ENGAGEMENT with your company. While these ideas are similar, they aren’t quite the same. You want to frame this message with a sense of urgency to click a link. You also want to make it as easy as possible for someone to open the message and just click a link so they continue to stay engaged with your marketing.   Subject Line We recommend that you frame the subject line very clearly with something about “not missing out” or “staying informed”. The subject should create a compelling and specific call to action.  Some senders use an offer in the reconfirmation message to encourage action. Highlight this in the subject line if this is your approach. Examples We’ve Missed You!  Take Action continue receiving our offers! Last Opportunity to Stay Informed (Action Required) Free shipping plus save 15% on next purchase   From Address While you can use any From Address, we recommend that your From: label clearly identifies your company rather than using a lead owner name. A disengaged recipient is more likely to recognize “Your Company” than “Bob Smith”.   Email Content In the body of the message your call to action should be immediate and clear. Put the reconfirmation at the top of the message content. Some usability studies have suggested that two choices may be more successful than a single choice so consider a bolder reconfirmation link at the top and a smaller link or button lower to unsubscribe. The main priority is getting someone to stick around for more of your mailings. You may also wish to make a short value statement about the fantastic information that someone can expect to receive by staying on your list! There are a couple of reasons for these recommendations. The first has to do with making things easy for the blocklist operator. If during the resolution process they can look at the mail received by their spamtraps and immediately tell from the subject line that the message is a reconfirmation pass it will make it much easier for them to consider the data quality issue resolved because their spamtraps will not activate the reconfirmation link. Some of the less automated blocklists will not list a sender for a reconfirmation message that hits their traps so it's important that your cleanup action look like what it is. The second reason behind this advice is that many people just scan their messages and don’t read all the way to the bottom; if someone has to read through a long value proposition before realizing that they must click a link to continue to be subscribed to your email program you may lose more subscribers than intended. The faster and easier it is to click that link the more people you’ll retain! A lot of people scan over marketing offers and think about them for a while before taking an action. You want to interrupt that process and make it clear that action is required now whether or not they’re ready to make a purchase!   Examples of simple reconfirmation email templates More examples can be found in this other Community Resource “A Creative Re-Engagement Email Campaign” Email #1 Subject Line: Action Required to stay subscribed to COMPANY   [First Name]:   You previously expressed interest in receiving valuable information and/or offers from COMPANY that are specific to your field.  We’d like your permission to continue sending you relevant information via email so that you can stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends/topics of interest.   Please click “YES” below to continue receiving research and trends in your area of interest.  COMPANY subscribers receive exclusive benefits, including the latest research briefs, white papers and/or compelling offers or discounts for future purchases.   Please update your Ccommunication Preference by [DATE/TIME] or this could be your last chance to receive any future research.  It only takes a moment to click one of the choices below.   YES, I would like to stay subscribed to the valuable information from COMPANY.   NO, I no longer wish to receive valuable and insightful offers from COMPANY.   Sincerely, COMPANY   ————–   Email #2   Subject Line: Your Subscription to COMPANY Industry Newsletter Expires Soon   [First Name]:   Our records show that you expressed interest in receiving industry information from COMPANY on [INSERT DATE].  Records indicate you have not read an email in [variable time frame], we do not want to bother you with emails you do no wish to receive so we want to confirm that you would like to remain subscribed to the COMPANY email program.   If you wish to be removed, you don’t have to do anything further.  However, if you do want to continue receiving email from COMPANY, please click the link to let us know:   YES, I would like to stay informed and continue receiving email from COMPANY.   Sincerely, COMPANY   ————–   Email #3   Subject Line: Your Subscription to COMPANY Has Expired   [First Name]:   Thank you for your previous interest in receiving valuable content from COMPANY.  Your subscription has now expired and you will no longer receive any future emails.   If in the future you would like to continue to receive email from COMPANY please click the link to sign up:   YES, I would like to receive email from COMPANY.   Sincerely, COMPANY     Other Resources Marketo Community Resource “A Creative Re-Engagement Email Campaign” http://www.spamhaus.org/whitepapers/permissionpass/ http://blog.deliverability.com/2013/07/do-you-know-whats-lurking-in-your-database-know-thy-data.html http://blog.marketo.com/2010/05/key-to-email-deliverability-is-reputation.html http://www.marketo.com/email-deliverability/    

Quick points: *Spamtraps are addresses owned by antispam organizations *Emailing a spamtrap (usually) gets your IP or domain blocklisted *Maintain current, direct opt-in with an active lead database to avoid this What is a spam trap or spamtrap?   A spam trap, or spamtrap is an email address secretly owned by an antispam organization that is used to detect spam. Antispam organizations do not sign up for mailing lists, so they consider any email sent to these addresses to be spam. Once email is sent to the spamtrap, the antispam organization that owns this address will blocklist the IP that sent the email (or, less often, domains that are linked in the message).   Email administrators purchase subscriptions to various blacklists, and use the lists to block all incoming email from listed IPs or containing listed domains. From the marketer’s perspective, this can mean a high number of bounced emails leading to low lead engagement, and ultimately to weak revenue performance.   There are two types of spamtraps – pristine traps, and repurposed/recycled traps. A pristine trap is an email address that was never used by a person. A repurposed trap is an email address that once belonged to someone but is no longer a valid address; these addresses will bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before an antispam organization will turn them into live traps.   How can a spamtrap get into my Marketo lead database? Purchased data   Purchased data is unreliable. The antispam world does not like the use of purchased data so antispam administrators have made a concerted effort to get spamtrap addresses into the databases of data vendors. While data vendors may say they provide opt-in data in reality consent should be direct to your company. Sending unsolicited email is prohibited by the Marketo Terms of Use because this practice has a high risk of causing blocklist issues that can destroy deliverability for multiple Marketo customers. To avoid spam traps get direct opt-in before sending email. If you have purchased data in the past we recommend setting any inactive purchased leads to marketing suspended or simply removing them from your database. Old data Repurposed traps are email addresses that were once valid but are now owned by an antispam organization. This can happen when a company goes out of business; expired domains are often purchased by antispam organizations. Sometimes a company that has a direct partnership with an antispam organization will allow email addresses of former employees or users to become spamtraps. Because antispam organizations will generally make sure future spam traps return a bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before they become spam traps you can prevent repurposed traps in your database by emailing remaining engaged with everyone in your database at least once every six months. Avoid “wake the dead” campaigns to addresses you have not contacted in more than six months. Unconfirmed form entries People can unintentionally enter spamtrap addresses into forms either by making a typo or by intentionally using a fake email address that happens to be a spamtrap. If you use single opt-in, you may add spamtraps to your mailing list. This is more likely to happen if you are a B2C company or if someone thinks they can get whitepapers or free trials simply by filling out a form with made-up information.   How can I identify spamtrap addresses?   Spamtrap addresses are considered trade secrets by the antispam organizations. They do not share these addresses because their goal is for senders to change their mailing practices rather than to simply remove spamtraps from their mailing lists.   That said, one thing we do know about spamtraps is that they tend to be automated processes and do not engage. Spamtraps do not click links. You can use smart list filters to identify inactive leads in Marketo.   How can I prevent spamtraps in my database? Maintain active, direct opt-in for all leads. Don’t purchase data (to grow your list, sponsor events, use list rental services that send the first message for you, or use co-branded content that sends you only good leads) Email everyone you want to email at least once every six months Don’t add old data directly to your mailing list (if you need to, add in small batches and send a welcome email with a slightly different subject to each batch) Regularly clean your database of inactive leads Grant access to assets such as free trials and whitepapers as email links to discourage intentional use of fake email addresses on forms Use scripting on your forms to identify potential typos Is this article helpful ? YesNo  

Issue You are unable to add members to a secondary instance using a secondary login.  You receive an error that the email is already in use.       Solution This solution applies in the following scenario: You have two or more Marketo instances. The instances are set up so you are allowed to specify the login email address separate from the email address used to notify/invite the users.  For example, something like this: Login: login.user@domain.com Email: user@domain.com You have a user in the second instance whose email address exists in the first instance, using a different login but the same email address, like this: Login: login2.user@domain.com Email: user@domain.com When you try to do invite the user to the second instance using Universal ID, you will get an error stating that the email is already in use. To resolve this, you will need to delete the existing login for the user in the second instance (login2.user@domain.com) and instead invite their primary login (login.user@domain.com) to the instance.   This will allow the user to access both instances from a single login   For more information on Universal ID: Using a Universal ID for Subscription Login - Marketo Docs - Product Docs   Who This Solution Applies To Subscriptions with Universal ID active      

In offering a premium email delivery platform to our customers we carefully monitor our IPs for listings on significant blocklists. When we find that one of our customers was responsible for a blacklisting we contact that customer and request some actions be taken to re-mediate the issue. The goal is to isolate potential spamtrap addresses and remove them. The group of addresses you select should be broad enough to capture those potentially bad addresses but small enough not to suppress a huge portion of your database. Step 1 Build an inactive Smart List using ALL filters Was sent email the day of and day before the spam trap hit (please contact support@marketo.com for the date of the trap hit if you do not have this information already.) Lead “was created” date is at least 6 months ago   Inactivity Filters  Not visited web page is “any”; constraint date of activity “in past 3 months” Not filled out form is “any”, constraint date of activity “in past 6 months” Not clicked link in email is “any”, constraint date of activity “in past 6 months” Not opened email is “any”, constraint date of activity “in past 6 months” If you have custom database fields that would show other forms of activity feel free to add this into your inactive Smart List to exclude active leads.   Step 2 Once you have created a smart list to identify these suspect leads remove them from your database. [Leads Tab > Lead Actions > Flow Actions] You’re Done!