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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?

Summary Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure Issue This flow step choice type causes a campaign failure because it is not supported. This is expected behavior. Solution Customers have to use Member of Smart List as indirection for the desired filter condition. i.e. Create a new Smart List with the "Deleted from SFDC" filter. Then change this failing flow step choice to use 'Member of Smart List' with the Smart List just created. Example flow step:

Issue You are using choices within flow steps with parameters such as "Member of Program" and the lead is qualifying for the choice when they are not part of the program. Solution When using a flow step for a campaign, you have the option of adding "choices" to the flow step so different leads can have different interactions. When using a choice parameter such as "Member of Engagement Program" or "Program Status". If the lead has been part of ANY engagement program, or has EVER had a program status equal to the parameter (i.e program status is email > sent), then the lead will qualify for that step. To prevent outside leads from being pulled in, use the "Member of Program" filter in your campaign Smart List to make sure content is delivered to your intended audience.

Issue Issue Description Getting 'Communication Failure' error popup repeatedly when doing normal operations within the application. Solution Issue Resolution: - Disable all browser extensions especially any dealing with ad blockers as they seem to be the primary cause of this issue ("Ghostery" is an example of extension known for blocking multiple Marketo operations/ tasks). - Try to repeat same operations after you have cleaned cache and cookies - (If above option does not work) Try to repeat same operations while using a incognito browser window.

Issue Issue Description An email has been added to multiple streams within the same nurture program, for example stream 1 and stream 2. Would a lead that received the email in stream 1 receive the same email from stream 2? Solution Issue Resolution No, Engagement Program will still apply the rule of not sending the same email to leads more than once as long as the email ID in stream 2 is the same from stream 1.

Issue How to identify in which campaign the "Delete Person" flow step is used. Solution You can identify it by going to "Campaign Inspector" in Marketing Activities. From there you can filter down by type of Smart Campaign and search "Delete Person" and the resulting list will be Smart Campaigns containing that flow step. If you do not see the Campaign Inspector, contact Marketo Support to have it enabled.

Issue You need to revert a data value change for a field on multiple leads. Solution There is no way through the UI to "undo" a data value change (unless it was a boolean field, in which case there are only two possible values.) You can certainly use a Smart List to identify whose values have changed, but there no way to go back to the old value (unless it's stored elsewhere in another field or through another data store, along with the API). However, you can use the API to extract the data value change activity from the activity log, which would include the old and new values, extract the original values, then use the API to rewrite the old values back to the lead record. http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/lead-database/activities/#data_value_changes

Issue A lead met the trigger criteria but failed to trigger a Smart Campaign Solution When a trigger campaign Smart List contains both triggers and filters, the filters criteria must be satisfied before or at the exact moment the trigger fires. To determine whether this is the case for a particular lead: Look at the Smart List to determine what filter criteria need to be satisfied. Open the lead's activity history and see when the activity occurred that should have triggered the campaign. Go through the lead's activity history and determine when the values were set for each of the filter criteria. If one of the values was set after the trigger fired, the lead would not have qualified in time to go through the Smart Campaign.

Issue A lead shows as being a member of a campaign that had a single flow step of 'Change Data Value'. However, the lead doesn't show in the Results tab of the campaign, nor is the CDV activity logged in the activity log for the lead. Solution This can happen if the field to be updated was blank/null, and the new value in the CDV flow step is derived from another field, using a token, and this other field is also blank. Because the value 'changes' from blank to blank, we don't log anything in the activity log, but the lead is a member of the campaign.

Issue Leads that qualify for a Smart Campaign run through the flow with a Change Data Value flow step, but some leads don't have a data value changed, while other flow steps still apply. It seems that those leads have just skipped the Change Data Value step and went right on to the next flow step. Solution If the new value for the Change Data Value is exactly the same as the current value in the lead record, Marketo will skip that flow step. There won't be an activity entry in the activity log or results tab because the action did not actually happen. Example Say you had a field called Favorite Sport and a lead that already has the value of "Football" in that field on their record. The flow step is Change Data Value: Attribute: Favorite Sport New Value: Football In this example, a lead will run that through flow step, but since the value did not change Marketo will just move on to the next flow step.

Issue How do the links (both Marketo and Non-Marketo) populate in the dropdown of Visited Web Page trigger or filter? Solution The drop-down shows a limited number of options. These links are fetched from any of your leads' activity logs. The values in the dropdown of the "Visited Web Page" will show if there is any lead who visited a webpage and this webpage or link is stored in the activity log of the email (may be in past). If the expected webpage doesn't show up in the dropdown list, first try typing it in and letting the autocomplete offer the URL. If you type it in and it still doesn't show as an option, then none of the leads have visited that page at least once. You can create a test lead for yourself and visit the desired webpage to get this added in the dropdown.

Issue A Program or Smart Campaign was deleted and you would like to have it restored. Solution Marketo Support cannot restore deleted programs or campaigns. Marketo Support can only restore deleted leads, emails, and landing pages within a certain amount of time after deletion. Landing pages and emails that are assets of a deleted program cannot be restored. Marketo Support can provide the smart campaign configuration, including details such as filters in the smart list and flow steps. It's essential, however, that the deleted campaign is relatively recent, ideally within the last 2 weeks.

Issue My token is not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email. Environment If customers manually type a {{my.token}} and use uppercase M such as {{My.token}}, then the view as webpage version of email may not render that token as expected. The feature to HTML encode lead tokens (source of external data) for security reasons, applies to my tokens that incorrectly use uppercase M. HTML Encode Tokens Solution Use the token picker to pick the correct lowercase {{my.token}}.

If the user makes changes to the my tokens, snippets, etc during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will those changes be reflected—No If someone unsubscribes during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will they receive the email—Yes Can you cancel a head start program once the processing of the an email that is using head start has begun—Yes What happens to the processing data when someone cancels a program during the processing of the an email that is using head start—It is deleted (I.e. Program membership, etc.)

Issue You have a custom landing page template and are able to see that landing page is not rendering perfectly on the editor but works as expected when published. Solution As you are facing the issue on a custom template, we suggest you to follow the below steps. Download a template form the URL- https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/landing-page-templates/guided-landing-page-template-list.html In Marketo, navigate to the Design Studio Click Landing Pages in the left-hand tree, then select Templates. In the menu bar, click Import Template. Choose the downloaded file, enter a template name, then click Import (make sure to pick a descriptive name and indicate that editing mode is Guided). Create a new Landing page with the recently downloaded template without making any changes. If the default background image works on this landing page as expected, it confirms that the issue lies with the custom coding that was added to the template. Marketo Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting custom code. The best point of contact will be your web developer who should be able to resolve the issue for you. Please be aware that the landing page editor may not load all external resources in the editor or previewer, which can cause them to look different than the published version. If the background image doesn’t render on this newly downloaded template as well, contact support and we will assist in troubleshooting your issue.

Issue You receive the "Subject is empty" error when attempting to approve an email which contains an emoji character in the subject line, and elsewhere in the email, emojis may fail to render. Solution Marketo can render any Unicode character up to 5.2 and any ASCII character, but this does not encompass emojis. The Marketo email editor will strip out any unsupported symbols. This is because we cannot guarantee the consistency of their appearance across platforms, as not all clients can render all emoji. Marketo only supports the text symbols that are generally then converted into emoji's by the recipient client or operating system. The basic symbols in a list such as https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols should work, as they are ASCII characters and not reliant on extra encoding. These are a set of accepted text symbols that will universally work on all clients and many will convert them to emoji. Just highlight the symbol from https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols, copy and paste it into your email. Alternately, you can work around this by q-encoding the emoji in UTF-8 format, which will render a string of code to add to your subject line. This code tells the email client to render the desired emoji. All you need to do is copy your desired emoji and run it through a Unicode to UTF-8 translation tool, such as https://onlinetools.com/unicode/convert-unicode-to-utf8. As an example, say you want to send a Happy Birthday email to a lead. You could copy the (birthday cake) emoji and run it through a translator to yield the code "=?utf-8?Q?=F0=9F=8E=82?=" Entering this code in your subject line without the quotation marks will render the emoji on the client's end, and render it in the design most compatible with their device/browser. With any email design, it's always important to test before a live send to confirm it appears the way that you expect it to.

Issue An Event Program in Marketo connected with ReadyTalk has some members with the status of "Registration Error" and a Status Reason of "Error registering with webinar provider. exception='Ready Talk API call error: ERROR -> HTTP Code ='403". The LaunchPoint connection in the Admin area may also show this error. Solution This error is an API call that Marketo is getting back from ReadyTalk, and will apply to the individual record that encounters the error but doesn't impact subsequent records that are attempted to be synced. Additionally the LaunchPoint page displays the status of last API call and, if it failed, it displays that information there, but the error will go away when subsequent registrations are successful. This error can be caused by any of the following: Meeting is in a closed state - this can occur when either people try to register after the event is complete, or the date and time of the meeting is changed in ReadyTalk without using the "Refresh from Webinar Provider" feature in Marketo Meeting is cancelled. First name, last name, or email address is missing on the registration form. The format of a registrants email is invalid. (This usually occurs when a registrant enters something like .con instead of .com) The meeting title length is invalid, it must be between 1 and 300 characters. First name field exceeds 125 characters. Last name field exceeds 125 characters. The answer provided in a registration field exceeds 255 characters (i.e. Title, Company, Address, etc). If people are registering after the event is complete, one possible recommendation would be to have the registration landing page redirect to another landing page after the event has either initiated or completed, which provides people the opportunity to register for subsequent events. This way people that attempt to register for the event after it has concluded will not be able to do so, but they will be provided the option to register for future events. This will prevent people from trying to register for an event that has ended and closed, preventing future 403 errors. This doc walks through how you can do this: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/landing-page-actions/redirect-a-marketo-landing-page-to-another-page.html?lang=en Who This Solution Applies To ReadyTalk integration users

Issue An email program with "Send in recipient time zone" was scheduled to sent out an email on Jan 8th, 2019 8:00 PM PST but you see that it was sent out to leads on Jan 8th 12:01 AM PST. Solution From the activity logs of the lead, you can observe the following: 1. Send Email activity happened on Jan 8th 12:01 AM PST. This is when Marketo issued the Send request to the server, which held the request until 8:00 PM PST, per the time zone restrictions. 2. Email Delivered happened on Jan 8th 8:00 PM PST. The MTA (message transfer agent) pushed the held emails to the receiving servers. The send email event is an indication that the lead was qualified at 12:01AM but the actual delivery of the email happened at 8:00 PM. So, the send event means the leads were processed and prepared for email delivery. The delivery event is when the email is actually sent and delivered. You will see this behavior when emails are sent with time zone restrictions. For the complete details on Recipient Time-Zone and it's working , please refer to the following Adobe experience league document :- Schedule Email Programs with Recipient Time Zone

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Flashing Clock Icon on Batch Campaign

Flow step choice condition for "Person was Deleted from SFDC" with 'in past' "7 days" causes campaign failure

Flow Step Choices Qualifying Leads who are Members of Other Programs

Getting Repeated 'Communication Failure' Errors

Having the Same Email within Multiple Streams in a Nurture Program

How to Create a Custom Interesting Moment Type

How to Identify Where the “Delete Person” Flow Step Is Used

How to Revert Data Value Changes

Lead Does Not Trigger Smart Campaign

Lead went through CDV flow step but it's not logged in the activity log

Leads Skipping Change Data Value Flow Steps

Links/URL Showing in Visited Web Page Trigger Drop-Down

Need Deleted Program or Smart Campaign Restored

My token not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email.

Head Start feature Q&A

Tokens Not Populating in ICS (Calendar) File When Sending Sample Email

Troubleshooting Background Image Not Being Rendered on Landing Page Editor

Using Emojis in Marketo Emails

ReadyTalk Webinar Registration Error 403

Email Program Appears to Send Emails Early