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 Issue Description You receive notification that Campaign Failed in trying to update Segmentation for leads. Solution To troubleshoot this issue review the Segmentations for the following: Click on the Segmentation to pop up in a dialog box with the failed Segment(s) If a Segment failed to approve, review the Smart List filters for missing values or errors in the smart list logic of the Segment. When errors have been fixed, approve the Segment, review again if the notification occurs again.

Included in this article Overview: Root Causes and Solutions: The image is too large and it takes a long time for it to load The image dimensions are not defined in the campaign editor Overview: In some cases when creating a dialog box campaign that includes only an image, the dialog box won't render properly on the page. This might look like below: Root Causes and Solutions: The image is too large and it takes a long time for it to load Solutions: Wait to see if eventually the image loads properly. In this case, you will want to use an image that is a smaller file size. The image dimensions are not defined in the campaign editor The dialog box doesn't have any indication for what its height should be (auto-height is enabled by default). Solutions: Select the image in the editor and click 'Edit Image' button Go to the Appearance tab and verify that the dimensions are defined If the dimensions are not set, manually set them or re-insert the image (this will automatically configure the image's original dimensions)

This comes from Alex Pelletier. Thank you, Alex! Here is a typical scenario: Marketing is sending email campaigns and some emails are bouncing back. Marketing would like to give visibility to sales on which of their leads bounced. Why should sales care about invalid email addresses? Most of the time, email addresses are bouncing because the person left the company. So knowing that suddenly one of your lead has left the company is a good opportunity to reengage with this account. Sales could call to find out who replace the person that left and and create a new lead. On the other hand, for your clients, if suddenly your internal champion leaves the company, you want to make sure you reach out to the account to help them continue to use your product. The last thing you want is to lose an account because someone left the company and you were not aware. Now you can do it easily using Marketo and Salesforce.com! Watch this 4 minutes tutorial video to learn how to setup properly both Marketo and Salesforce.com. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BQiiNmq4M0

Issue Executing a GET API call to retrieve a list of available activity types in the target instance using the '/rest/v1/activities/types.json' endpoint, resolves with an unexpected attribute name for a field with the display name ID in the context of Marketo Custom Objects. An example of that may be a Marketo Custom Object with the following name: '3 to be', as can be shown in the image below: One of the '3 to be' Marketo custom object fields name is 'ID'. (highlighted in red). When performing a GET API call using the '/rest/v1/activities/types.json' endpoint, you will be getting a list of available activity types in the target instance, along with associated metadata of each type, however for a Marketo custom object with an ID field name, you may see it returns back with a slightly different name, in this case, it would be returning the following output for my test Marketo Custom Object activity: { "id": 100019, "name": "Add to 3 to be", "primaryAttribute": { "name": "3 to be ObjRef", "dataType": "integer" }, "attributes": [ { "name": "3 To Be Person Id", "dataType": "integer" }, { "name": "ID (3)", "dataType": "string" }, { "name": "Linkfield4", "dataType": "string" } ] } ], Here's an image of what it may look like when making the call using POSTMAN: In fact, the character in the brackets next to the ID field represents the very first character of your Marketo Custom Object name. Environment Customers who have Marketo Custom Objects where one of the custom object fields is named 'ID'. Solution If this is interrupting your business, you may want to select a different name for the ID field under your Marketo Custom Object. (ie. ID number, Transaction ID etc.) Root Cause This behavior is expected and is a result of the 'ID' field being a unique field in the context of Marketo custom objects world and while it may be possible to create a Marketo Custom Object field with the name 'ID', it may be better to give it a distinct name that will be better describing what kind of ID field it is.

Question: How do I add a link to my lead/contact's Salesforce detail page when sending an alert from Marketo? Answer: If the lead or contact is in both Marketo and Salesforce at the time when the alert email is sent, then the link to the Salesforce detail page will be automatically appended to the alert email sent by Marketo. Note You will need to use the "Send Alert Info" token within your Alert email while designing your email in the Design Studio of Marketo. This is a article attached image Below is what the generated alert looks like once it is sent from Marketo (note the link to the Salesforce detail page is automatically inserted): This is a article attached image Note if the lead or contact is not in Salesforce then there is no link to the Salesforce detail page: This is a article attached image

Issue Description Sometimes there can be a circumstance where a text token should hold null value. Since the token must contain a value, you need to insert a value that will display as empty when the token is rendered. Issue Resolution Adding a HTML comment to the on the Text {{my.token}} side would work.  If you're just plopping the token into your HTML, this will be fine. If you're embedding in JS then you can still check for that specific value, it just won't be "magic": if ( "{{my.token}}" != "" ) { // it's not empty }

Issue Issue Description When pulling an Email Performance Report, the click total doesn't match a smart list looking for all clicks of any link in the email. Solution Issue Resolution One possible reason for this is that in an Email Performance Report, the Unsubscribe link does not count as a click, only as an unsubscribe and will only show in that column. This is because people can unsubscribe via other methods, so they are all included together to give an overall view of your engagement (or disengagement in the case of unsubscribe).

Issue Description API Only user is not appearing when creating a service in [Admin > LaunchPoint] Issue Resolution It is highly likely that the reason why the API user was not appearing because it did not have "API Only" ticked. This can be checked in [Admin > Users & Roles > User > Edit User]. However, this cannot be modified once the API user is created, so in order for the API user to appear in LaunchPoint, "API Only" must be ticked when the API user is created. Reference: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Create+an+API+Only+User Who This Solution Applies To Admin users

Issue When trying to edit an email you are receiving the error "Cannot Load Email" with out any other details. This is only when trying to edit the email, other functionalities like cloning still work. Solution The reason you are receiving this error message is because the HTML of the email has been corrupted. Extract the HTML of the email by following the instructions here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Download+an+Email's+HTML Find the email and select it In the Email Actions Drop down click Download HTML Once the emails HTML is extracted you can check on the errors by pushing the HTML through a validator (https://validator.w3.org/) **If no Errors are evident please create a support ticket. If there are errors but you would still like to use the HTML in an email. Create a new email, replace the HTML with the extracted content from the old email Append the HTML to resolve any errors that would corrupt the content Save and Approve Email for use in campaigns and programs Root Cause Sometimes emails can become corrupted in Marketo. When this occurs unexpected behavior may occur. Typically emails become corrupted when a copy of a copy of a copy (etc.) occurs. With each clone of an asset there is a small chance that the asset could become corrupted, this becomes more and more likely as clones of clones are made. A solution to help prevent corruption would be to create a 'master' email that you can clone from each time instead of cloning from something else that was cloned. This same solution can be applied to other assets such as landing pages.

This is working as expected. The Parent Company Name field gets its value set from a different process and not via the SFDC Synch. SFDC and Marketo Engage both have a Parent Account ID field in the Account Object (Company Object in Marketo). If there is a parent account ID in that field, then the value of that field is automatically populated via a reference to the other Account Record. Since Company in Marketo is mapped to Name (SFDC Account) whenever that value is updated it will be reflected in Marketo. Example: Account ID 1 has a Parent Account ID of 2. They both have records in the same Account table. If the Name is changed of the Parent Account it is automatically reflected in any child accounts as the Parent Account Name is just a reference.

Issue You are using the Add to Program or Add to SFDC Campaign flow step and want to know if it's possible to assign a specific status when that flow step is used. Solution When you use the Add to Program or Add to SFDC Campaign flow step, Marketo will assign the first status listed in the Channel associated to that program. If you want to choose a different status, you can use the flow step of Change Program Status or Change SFDC Status. If the lead is not a member of the program or campaign, using the flow step of Change Program status will add them.

Issue Issue Description The picklist options are updated in Salefsorce for a field that is syncing with Marketo and is used within a Marketo Form, but the form does not automatically reflect these updates. Solution Issue Resolution When field picklist options are updated in Salesforce, the Marketo forms using this field are put in a Draft. This will allow the form draft to be reviewed to ensure the picklist values on the form match what's in Salesforce before being reapproved. Who This Solution Applies To Clients syncing with Salesforce

Our sync employs a field level conflict resolution mechanism. For a particular record, if field X is updated in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and field Y is updated in Marketo, then we will update Marketo with the new value for field X and Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the new value for field Y. In the case where the same field is updated on both systems for a particular record with a short period of time, we will choose the Marketo value as the winner for Leads and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM value as the winner for Contacts.

Are you looking for a quick template to use in Marketo? We have certainly got you covered with quite a number of options. 1. Visit our Template Marketplace at templates.marketo.com. 2. Select a template that you want and click the Import Template button. 3. On the tab or window that opens, login to your instance of Marketo. 4. Your Program Import will automatically begin. That's all there is to it. Your template is ready for you to use.

Issue You have the Munchkin tracking code on your non-Marketo web page but visits to the page are not being tracked. Solution If you have customized the Munchkin tracking code, it may not work. Marketo only supports the Munchkin code as it is provided in your instance. If you need to alter the code, you would need to work with your web developer to determine why the customized code is not working. To find the supported Munchkin tracking code: Go to Admin > Munchkin. Select the version of Munchkin you intend to use. Place the Munchkin code on your page as outlined in our document on adding Munchkin tracking to your site.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

How often does the data between Marketo and Microsoft Dynamics CRM sync?

Campaign Failure: Update Segmentation

Troubleshooting: Web Personalization (RTP) - Dialog box with image not rendering correctly

How to Notify Sales When Their Contacts or Leads Have Invalid Email Addresses (Video)

Smart List Cannot Be Added to Report Custom Columns

How do you sync a new record in Marketo to Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Get Activity Types via API returns a character wrapped in brackets for a Marketo Custom Object field named ID

How Do I Add a Link to My Lead/Contact’s Salesforce Detail Page When Sending an Alert from Marketo?

Creating a token with a null value

Sends Type Column Symbol Definitions in Email Insights Sends Report

Email Performance Report Clicks Doesn't Match Smart List

API Only User Is Not Appearing When Creating a Service In [Admin > LaunchPoint]

"Cannot Load Email" Error When Editing an Email

Parent Company Name display SFDC data when not mapped

Status Assigned to Lead in Flow Step Add to Program

Why did all my Emails Bounce?

Salesforce Picklist Updates Not Reflected in Marketo Forms

What Are the Conflict Resolution Rules Used by Marketo When Synching with Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Importing Templates from the Marketo Template Marketplace

Munchkin Not Tracking Page Visits to Non-Marketo Page