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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?

Issue How do Revenue Cycle Explorer filters operate? Solution RCE Filters operate in the following ways: Select from a List (Includes, Excludes) -- This filter type within RCE will let you include or exclude preset values Match a specific string (Contains, Does not Contain) -- This filter type will let you enter a free form value such as Contains "We" to find statuses which may have Web in them. The not-contains would filter anyone who did not have "We" in the status. On either filter you can select Multiple Values. Within the Match a Specific String function click on [+] and add another value option and this will then add additional string areas to use. A example would be Status contains: Reg Regis Registered Registered - Web etc.. As you can see you can match to one of many values!

Issue When sending an email from Sales Insight it looks as though it has been sent as expected, but the person to whom the email was addressed never received the message, nor can it be found via the Was Sent Sales Email filter in a Smart Campaign. Solution Sales Insight for SFDC will not send to people who have a status of Email Invalid, Marketing Suspended or are Unsubscribed. Please validate that the person you are trying to send to does not have these statuses. As well, Sales Insight emails can be sent to groups up to 200 people. Any more and your send will not process. If the person's statuses are as expected and the group was less than 200 people, please contact Marketo Support to troubleshoot further. Note: The Sales Insight plugins for Outlook and Gmail will send emails to leads regardless of Unsubscribed, Email Invalid, or Marketing Suspended status.

Issue What type of formats are accepted for uploading data to Facebook custom audiences from Marketo? Solution Note: The phone numbers must always have the country code included even if they are in the same country as your business.. The endpoint for facebook allows the following formats: 1-234-567-8910 12345678910 +44 123 456 7890 With or without punctuation is allowed.

Issue You receive a Marketo email and an email address in the text is blue and underlined, which does not match your desired styling for the email. Solution When an email address is simply included in the email text, the email client's default behavior may automatically convert it to a link with blue text and an underline. In order to override this default email client behavior, use the following HTML: <a href="mailto:[email address]" style="[custom styling]">[email address]</a> When the email address link is inside the anchor tag <a>, the email client will not override this custom styling that you wish to use. This can be used for tokens as well: <a href="mailto:{{lead.Email Address}}" style="[custom styling]">{{lead.Email Address}}</a>

Issue Admin > Sales Insight > Licensed Seats displays the number of seats used in the last 30 days. How is this calculated? Solution The number of seats used is calculated by the number of unique SFDC users that have loaded either the Sales Insight panel on a Lead/Contact/Account/Opportunity page layout or accessed the Marketo tab in the past 30 days. Who This Solution Applies To Customers with Sales Insight for Salesforce

Issue You want to create a field that will grab the web page the form was filled out on and add this as a token in an alert that goes to sales when a form is filled out. Solution This can be achieved either through a Smart Campaign or the JS API code. The code is more efficient because it doesn't mean another trigger is active in your instance. Smart campaign: You'll want to create a smart campaign with Smart List - Fills Out Form and Flow - Change Data Value, [your field name], New Attribute is {{trigger.Web Page}} You would need to reference the trigger token in the alert email so the team knows what product page the end user filled out the form on. Code: (Embedded Form) This can be done with a hidden field. MktoForms2.loadForm("//app-**01.marketo.com", "***-***-***", 148, function(form) { form.addHiddenFields({ LastFormURL : document.location.href }) }); The asterisks represent your company's Marketo data (your Munchkin ID and Marketo instance). Your developer will know what to do if s/he is already using the embed code. Code: (Marketo LP) In a Marketo LP, you will have to edit the template and put this at the end, before the </body> tag : <script> MktoForms2.whenReady(function (form) { form.addHiddenFields({ LastFormURL : document.location.href }); }); </script>

Issue You come across a few leads who failed to sync to SFDC and would like to have the list of leads who faced the same issue. Solution Unfortunately Marketo doesn't have a specific type of filter to leads who failed to sync to SFDC. However if they are new leads who haven’t synced to SFDC, then you can filter them by using the filters "Person was created" and "SFDC Type" with condition "is empty". If you want to find the list of leads (previously synced to SFDC) who failed to sync among a particular group of leads, you can filter by following the below steps. 1. Create a new Boolean type field in SFDC namely "Sync Error?" and with the default value as "true". 2. Wait for the field to sync into Marketo. 3. Create a Smart Campaign to select those group of records and the flow steps to change the value of the Boolean field "Sync Error?" to ”False" and then "Sync person to SFDC". 4. Once the campaign has finished running, you will be to pull a report on SFDC on the list of leads who have the value "True" for the field "Sync Error?". It means that the value was not updated to SFDC as the record failed to sync. With this list you will be able to select the records and resolve the sync issue. You can also create a smart list of leads who were never able to sync with the following filters: Lead was synced to SFDC : Assign to : is not empty SFDC Type: is Empty

Issue You may notice that there may be a block in SFDC that stops syncing unsubscribes from Marketo to SFDC. After fixing the block in SFDC the new unsubscribes will sync as expected. Here is how to get all the unsubscribes that happened before this fix to sync into SFDC. Solution You would need to set up a campaign to reset the field value. Smart list: Unsubscribed = true Flow: Change data value "unsubscribed" -> False Change data value "unsubscribed" -> True That would take everyone who is currently unsubscribed, switch to false and then back to true. That should cause the true value to sync up to SFDC for all of those records. However, make sure you do this at a time when you are absolutely positive there are no email campaigns going out.

Issue What happens if you log off (close) Marketo when importing a large amount of data through list import? Will it be processed or resume when you log back in? Solution It will keep running if you log off. Next time when you have a large list to import, we would recommend sending a notification to yourself. There is a little box you can put your email address in right when you start the import, it will email you when the import is done.

Issue Description Munchkin activities recording stopped and web page activities were not logged. Since the activities were not immediately registered, any Trigger Campaigns set to initiate when those activities occurred would not have been triggered. Issue Resolution Initial Steps: As soon as you identify an issue with Munchkin Activities recording, contact Marketo Support to ensure that proper steps are taken to prevent any data loss. Once the activity data is back-filled, identify all the Smart Campaigns that were impacted and need to be replayed. If you need assistance to identify which smart campaigns were active during this incident, our Campaign inspector is a great tool to assist you. https://nation.marketo.com/docs/DOC-4470-campaign-inspector-for-triggered-recurring-campaigns. Replay Impacted Smart Campaign: After you have identified the smart campaigns that were impacted, create a new smart campaign using the following smart list filters; For Smart Campaigns triggered by clicking a link on a web page, use the following filters. Select the applicable link and timeframe based off what datacenter your instance is located in. The second filter is to prevent activities that were not impacted from replaying. For Smart Campaigns triggered by a web page visit, use the following filters. Select the applicable web page and timeframe based off what datacenter your instance is located in. The second filter is to prevent activities that were not impacted from replaying. After the Smart List is set up, the flow steps should mirror the flow steps of the original Smart Campaign that you wish to replay. If you experience any issues with replaying the impacted smart campaigns, please contact Marketo support at https://support.marketo.com, or through any of the methods listed here.

Issue Description When we delete the static lists from a program after a period of time, will the leads they contain no longer be member of the program? Issue Resolution The individuals should still be a member unless you change their membership status to remove them. Remember lists are simply collections of individuals so you can easily process or associate them, they don't automatically get "membership" unless you had corresponding flow steps that you used when putting them on the list. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description Customers based in our Sydney datacenter experienced a service issue which caused an intermittent disruption in email sends beginning 10:30 AM AEST local time on November 12, 2018. This issue was resolved at 1:00 pm AEST and all emails are now sending normally. No customers outside of the Sydney datacenter were impacted. During the impacted time frame, some email sends were lost and will not be delivered. The issue occurred intermittently during the affected time, so some emails were sent successfully, while others were not. This documentation provides details on how to identify the impacted lead records. Identifying Affected Leads Symptoms All lead records that were sent emails during the impacted time will show an "Email Sent" activity (as per normal behavior) Leads that were not impacted and successfully had emails sent will show the corresponding "Email Delivered" or "Email Bounced" activities (as per normal behavior) However, the impacted leads that emails did not send to will NOT have any "Email Delivered" or "Email Bounced" activity. They will show the "Email Sent" activity, but there will not be any corresponding activity to indicate what the result was - Delivered or Bounced. The emails that failed to send will not be retried. Leads impacted by this service issue will not receive the email unless customers choose to re-send it through another Campaign or Email Program send. Using Smart Lists to Identify Leads To identify affected leads create the following Smart List: Filter logic: ALL filters Flow Step #1: Was Sent Email Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #2: Not Was Delivered Email Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #3: Not Email Bounced Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Flow Step #4: Not Email Bounced Soft Email is any Date of Activity is ‘2018-11-12’ Once complete, your Smart List will look like this: The lead records returned by this Smart List will be the impacted records that did not have emails sent during the affected time frame. *NOTE: In a limited number of circumstances, there is a possibility that a very small number of leads did not have the "Email Sent" activity logged. This will be an uncommon occurrence, if it happens at all. Who This Solution Applies To Customers in the Sydney Datacenter. No customers whose Marketo instances are located in other datacenters are impacted in any way. Where to get additional help If you would like any additional help please contact Marketo Support.

Issue Description How to identify in which campaign the "Delete Person" flow step is used Issue Resolution 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, navigate to Admin > Treasure Chest to activate it. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description Your phone calls are not logging to Salesforce Issue Resolution Tout Phone is a great way to get your call information logged to Salesforce, but there are a couple things you will want to be aware of when using the log a call feature. 1. The Contact must have a Salesforce ID attached to them. 2. We currently do not log calls to Opportunities. Who This Solution Applies To ToutApp customers Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description You receive "Object reference exception error" in Outlook Issue Resolution The reason this error is occurring is because the ToutApp Outlook add-in depends on a reference object in a newer version of the .NET framework than the version of .NET currently installed on your machine. To resolve this, download the updated version (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42643) of the .NET framework from Microsoft's site, and install it on your machine. Once it's installed, please reboot the computer. After you've successfully installed and rebooted, go ahead and open Outlook. You should see it start up without issue, and the ToutApp add-in should be present and fully functional. Who This Solution Applies To Customers with ToutApp

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

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