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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

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 try to approve a segmentation and get the error message of "No possible draft" even when there is a draft in place. Solution This error message can be a little misleading, as there usually is a draft in place. Check to make sure that segments in the draft have Smart List filters in place and that there are no empty values in the smart lists. An example of an empty value would be "First Name is ____" instead of "First Name is Joe."

Issue You have a lead that is marked as Email Suspended and you are not sure whether they can receive Marketo emails or not. Solution When emails bounce as spam, the lead that bounced is set to "Email Suspended." "Email Suspended" is a historical field. A more accurate name for this field would probably be "This email was suspended at some point in its history." The actual suspension only lasts 24 hours. To see if the lead is currently suspended, check the timestamp on the 'Email Suspended' field. If it is more than 24 hours ago, the lead is not currently suspended and can receive email from your Marketo instance. However, the "Email Suspended" flag will remain on the lead record for the purposes of future troubleshooting. It is not possible to set "Email Suspended" to "false" once it has been set to "true." The "Email Suspended Cause" field will provide the bounce message associated with the most recent spam bounce.

Issue You created a batch A/B test with a sample size of 100%. Even though all the leads should have been sent the test email, some leads still receive the winner. Solution Email Batch Programs are built in such a way that the test is sent with an background 'exploration' Smart Campaign, and the winner is sent with a background 'exploitation' campaign. The exploitation campaign will send the "winner" email to the following Smart List: Member of Program Not Sent Test Email There are two situation where the exploration campaign may not send to all the leads in the program, even when the sample size for the test is 100%. If there are duplicate leads in the program, the program will not send the email to the same address twice. It will send the test email to the first lead and skip all following leads with the same email address. Those skipped leads will then qualify for the "winner"/exploitation campaign and will receive the winner. If there are leads in the program who hit their Communication Limits while the "test"/exploration is running, they will be skipped. When the "winner"/exploitation campaign runs, if those leads are not at their Communication Limits at that time, they will be sent the winner email because they were not sent the test email.

Issue Can the {{system.unsubscribeLink}} be customized to point to a different page, such as a preference center? Solution Issue Resolution The system token unsubscribe link will always behave the same way, and it cannot be customized. The {{system.unsubscribeLink}} will always bring you to: sub.domain/UnsubscribePage.html. If your Landing Pages are not branded, this system token will still behave the same way and take the lead to your out-of-the-box Marketo Unsubscribe Page (ending in /UnsubscribePage.html). If you want the link to go to a different page, the easiest workaround is to create a redirect rule that sends visitors to UnsubscribePage.html to your custom page instead.

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 A newly created Program is not showing up in Program Cost Analysis Report. Solution The Program Cost Analysis Report takes a little time to show new Programs that have just been created. It doesn't do much good to show a success metric before a program has had a chance to succeed so it needs time in order for data to be collected. If you don't see the program in the report within 48 hours, check these things: If there is a view filter in place The program is active and approved If all that looks good contact Support for additional troubleshooting.

Issue List Import shows other lists Pending Import import even though you are only importing one list. Solution The List Import function can be accessed via API as well as through the Marketo user interface. By default, the list import function can process two list imports at a time and can queue up to ten more. If the API has a large number of list imports queued up, this may interfere with your ability to import lists in your Marketo instance. If this occurs regularly, you may want to work with your IT department to schedule the API calls to run outside of business hours.

Issue You want to know if it's possible to have the same folder name in both the Default workspace and another workspace. Solution You cannot have the same folder name in different worksapces. For example, if you have a folder in your Default workspace named "Test" and then you try to create another folder called "Test" in a different workspace, this will not work. The same thing will happen if you try to clone a program to a different workspace and you use the exact same file name. When you are creating new folders or cloning programs, you must use a unique name.

Issue How deleting or archiving programs will affect the Lead field: Acquisition Program. Solution If you delete a Marketo Program, the field will append a "deleted" at the end of the Program Name. For example, if the Program Name was "July 2016 newsletter" for Acquisition Program, after deleting the Program, the field value would change to: "July 2016 newsletter - deleted (####)". The numbers represent an activity ID on the backend. Note: Archiving Programs does not affect the Acquisition Program.

Issue You are considering archiving or deleting old programs, and you are wondering how that will affect reporting on membership of leads. Solution If you delete a Marketo Program, the membership data will be lost. Technically, in the Lead record Activity Log, there will not be an activity for "no longer in program," but any and all reporting will not be able to report from deleted programs. Keep in mind that Marketo Support cannot restore deleted programs. Archiving Programs keeps program membership data. This means that Analytics reporting, including Revenue Explorer, will be able to see archived programs and the related data. However, smart lists will no longer be able to reference the archived program. For example, say the smart list was: "Member of Program, program is [name]". In this situation, the smart list wouldn't be able to locate the program.

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.

Issue "Added to List" trigger is not firing when a lead is imported to a list when the List Import Mode "Skip new people and updates" is selected. Solution Campaign triggers fire when the triggering activity is written to the lead's activity log. "Skip new people and updates" mode specifically skips activity logging. Since the "Added to List" activity is not written to the lead record when a lead is imported, the campaign will not be triggered.

Issue You sent an email using a Smart Campaign and the email performance report for the email shows more Sent than there are members in the Smart Campaign Solution The email may have been sent by more than one campaign. You can determine this by looking at the "Used By" info on the email's summary page, to see which campaigns sent the email. In this case, you can use the Campaign Email Performance Report to view the email's performance within the specific campaign.

Issue Webinar integration is giving an error "Invalid Username or Password" during setup, even though the username and password are correct. The webinar provider uses your Single Sign-On (SSO) provider for login. Solution Marketo is not able to access the SSO provider and will not be able to log into the service if SSO is used. Use the following workaround for your integration. Disable SSO for the webinar service so that a user with login and password can be used in the Marketo Launchpoint service. Create the integration user in the webinar provider and complete the integration Re-enable SSO for your webinar service after the webinar is over. Who This Solution Applies To Clients leveraging SSO for Launchpoint services

Issue When making API calls, Marketo reports the daily API limit has been reached but does not show when the limit resets. Solution When Marketo shows the daily API limit has been reached, it will reset itself that night at midnight central time, and then will allow for the API calls to resume. These are the reset times according to US time zones. 10:00 PM Pacific 11:00 PM Mountain 12:00 AM Central 01:00 AM Eastern

Issue When you add variables to your email template assets, the value assigned to that variable is not showing in the text-only version of the email even though it shows in the HTML version. Solution Email 2.0 variables do not pass the defined values for variables through to the text-only email. Since Marketo token values are passed through to the text-only email, customers may expect variable values to also be passed through to text-only emails. However, this is not currently the case.

Issue When creating a Smart List with a "Member of SFDC Campaign" filter, the SFDC Campaign is visible on the drop-down list, yet it throws an error when selected and the Smart List is loaded: "Error running Smart List: Check your Smart List configuration" Solution Things to check: The campaign has been re-named in SFDC or has been deleted. It could also be that somehow a "space" has been entered before the campaign name. For example, Marketo is looking for "SFDC Campaign Name" and SFDC has it as " SFDC Campaign Name" or "SFDC Campaign Name ". The campaign is present and active in SFDC, but is not visible to the sync user. The Marketo Sync User details can be located in [Admin > Integration > Salesforce > Username] This can be checked by logging in to SFDC as the Marketo sync user and verify that the campaigns are present with the correct name and activated for that sync user.

Issue Lead owners are required when syncing a lead to Salesforce, but is there a way we can sync them without assigning a lead owner? Yes there is, and it's called lead queues! Solution How to do it: Lead queues must be set up in Salesforce first. Like lead owners, the queues must be visible to the Marketo Sync user before they can be selected. Select the lead queue you want leads to be assigned to in the 'Sync Lead to SFDC' or 'Change Lead Owner' flow steps. Qualified leads that pass through this flow step with then be synced to Salesforce and assigned to the lead queue rather than a lead owner. A few important notes: Only leads can be assigned to a lead queue, contacts cannot and must be assigned an owner. Assignment rules in Salesforce can conflict with the request sent from Marketo. Double check these assignment rules to make sure there are no conflicts.

Issue None of your tokens are rendering inside of your .ics Calendar File token and instead are showing as the {{lead._____}} form. Solution This is caused when a single token has an undefined value, such as a 'My Token' which doesn't exist in your Program. Send yourself a version of the Calendar file and look for a blank space where a token should be- This will be the token causing the others to not work. Make sure to define a value for this token and then your Calendar File will render without issue.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Segmentation Cannot Be Approved with Error Message “No Possible Draft”

How the Email Suspended Field Works

An A/B test sent the winner email to some leads even though the test sample size was 100%

{{System.unsubscribeLink}} Customization

Large Influx of Records Syncing From SFDC to Marketo

Program Cost Analysis Report Not Showing a Program

List Import Shows Other Lists Pending Import Even Though You Are Only Importing One List

Same Folder Name in Different Workspaces

Restoring a Branded Tracking Link Domain Back to the Marketo Default

Program Acquisition When Deleting and Archiving Programs

Analytic Reporting: Program Membership When Deleting and Archiving Programs

Leads Not Syncing from SFDC to Marketo

Added to List Trigger is Not Firing When a Lead is Imported Into a List Via List Import

Email Performance Report Shows More Emails Sent than There Are Members in the Smart Campaign

Webinar Integration Gives Invalid Username or Password Error When Using SSO

Daily API Limit Has Been Reached and Need to Know When It Will Reset

Email 2.0 Variables Not Shown in Text-Only Emails

Smart List Error for Member of SFDC Campaign Filter

How to Sync Leads to Salesforce without Assigning a Lead Owner

Tokens Not Rendering in Calendar File