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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 The URL for the landing page shows as "https" even though you do not have SSL set up on your Marketo instance, causing the browser to display a "Not Secure" warning. Solution This can happen if the primary domain and DNS are SSL secure, but Marketo is not. For instance, if your primary domain is "https://www.mycompany.com" (SSL secure) then the DNS, which is also SSL secure, will push down the "https" transfer protocol down to all the CNAMEs on that DNS. This will force the Marketo landing page using the CNAME to use "https" in the URL, even though it is not secure. There are two ways to resolve this: Work with your IT department to see if there is a non-SSL option for your DNS Purchase SSL for your Marketo instance so that both your primary domain and your Marketo pages are SSL secure. If you would like to add SSL to your Marketo instance, please contact your Account Manager to see about adding that to your subscription.

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 Campaign has a "Visits Web Page" trigger and a wait step in the flow. Leads are showing as being in the wait step, but are not shown in the Campaign Members tab Solution The leads do not show up in the Campaign Members list because they are anonymous. Anonymous leads can trigger "Visits Web Page" but do not show in the campaign membership. They can go through the flow, including going into wait steps. To prevent this, add the filter "Email Address is not empty" to the Smart List for your campaign. This will prevent anonymous leads from being pulled into the flow.

Issue Does the email address assigned to the API user need to be an email address maintained by an actual person? https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Create+an+API+Only+User Solution The email address assigned to an API user does not need to be an existing email address or an actual person. It is used as an identifier for the API user. Generally, customers name the API user according to the integration the API user is being used for (e.g. integrationuser@company.com). This is useful for tracking where API calls are coming from when there are multiple integrations configured with Marketo via the API

Issue When using a Change Data Value flow step for a datetime field type and manually entering in a date and time, the time is displayed, but removed from flow step upon refresh. Solution The reason that the time is removed is because the display field in the flow step is a calendar picker (the drop-down). Calendar pickers do not support displaying the time. It is meant to select a date on the calendar and display that date. It appears to store the value to the record when manually entered in the field, but it will not remain upon campaign refresh.

Issue Issue Description When linking Google AdWords account to a Marketo Revenue Model and adding the Google Adwords conversion in the Revenue Model, Set AdWords Conversion button is missing from the Stage Actions drop down. Solution Issue Resolution You need to add Google AdWords as a Launchpoint service with a manager account Add Google AdWords as a Launchpoint Service with a Manager Account - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

No - It’s done automatically and behind the scenes. The algorithms used by our proprietary technology automatically present relevant content to your audience segment using digital behavior, keyword search terms, and firmographics such as: geolocation, employee size, revenue size, and industry. The recommendation engine uses predictive analytics and machine learning to predict which content asset will most likely to be individually relevant for each one of your website visitors to read.

Article Text Included in this Article: Overview Email Reports not Being Sent Check Report Preferences Fewer Leads than Expected Check Personal Regions Settings Cross-Domain Tracking Data Includes Own Company Overview All RTP users should be receiving a monthly and quarterly Summary Report. This email evaluates the performance of campaigns and recommended content and compares it to that of the previous month or quarter. Performance is based on click count and number of visitors converted to known leads, whether direct or assisted. Direct leads are visitors that clicked on a campaign or a piece of recommended content and filled out a form in the same visit. Assisted leads are visitors that clicked on a campaign or a piece of recommended content and filled out a form in a separate visit, up to 6 months in the future. If you would like to unsubscribe from the Summary Reports, see this article. Otherwise, several potential issues with Summary Reports are outlined below along with their potential solutions. Email Reports not Being Sent Check Spam Folder As a first step, try checking your spam folder. It's certainly possible that the email reports did not make it past your email client's spam filters. Check Report Preferences In your RTP settings, you will be able to enable or disable email reports. If you are expecting reports but not receiving them, it is possible the reports were disabled in your preferences. To check: Go to User Settings Check the Email Report settings at the bottom of the page Make sure to check the box for Summary Report and whether you would like a monthly or quarterly (or both) report. This page is also where you will be able to manage any other RTP email reports you wish to be subscribed to. Fewer Leads than Expected Check Personal Regions Settings Another page to check is the Personal Regions page. This page will allow you to display data in the Web Personalization platform and send email reports only related to the specified regions. In User Settings, click the Edit Regions button This should take you to the Set Personal Regions page: On this page, you will want to verify that any region you may have leads in is checked (marked as included in your Personal Regions). If regions that you have leads in are not included, the Web Personalization platform will not display data from that region or include it in the email reports. This means that if you have leads that are not included in your Personal Regions, their activity will not be included in Summary Reports. Cross-Domain Tracking If the visitor is shown a recommendation on one domain, but the recommended content is hosted on a different domain, two different sessions will be recorded. This divides the visit into two sessions: The click on the link to the recommended content, on the first domain The content itself and the form fill-out, on the second domain Because the click and the form fill are in two different sessions, the lead will be recorded as an Assisted Lead rather than a Direct Lead. This applies for both top-level domains (www.firstdomain.com and www.seconddomain.com) and sub-domains (pages.domain.com and www.domain.com/new_page). Cross-domain tracking will ultimately skew your metrics towards more Assisted Leads. To reduce the impact of this limitation, keep content recommendation and the content itself within the same domain when possible. Data Includes Own Company Clicks and visits from your own company can significantly skew your summary data, as your own employees may be visiting the company website on a daily basis. Because of this, it is important to exclude your own company from the organizations contributing to your Web Personalization data. To do this: Go to your Account Settings Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the Exclude IPs field In order to exclude your company's traffic from your data and reports, you will need to know the outbound IP address of your company's network. You should be able to obtain this information from your company's IT department. Once you have your company's outbound IP address, enter it into the Exclude IPs field and press

Issue When a Marketo field is synced to a SFDC field with a picklist, that picklist will be synced to Marketo when the field is added to a Marketo form. The values section of the field in the form will show the values from SFDC. However this does not occur with the standard state field in Marketo. Solution The state field's form picklist is not updated because it is automatically populated with the 50 US states. To get around this, you can either manually update the values in the picklist in the form, or you can use a custom Marketo field. This field can be remapped to the state field in salesforce with assistance from support.

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 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 A Change Data Value activity gets recorded on a person record but the Updated At field for the record doesn't get changed to reflect it. Solution The "Updated At" field in Marketo is a system managed field that gets refreshed any time that there is a data value change to a person field, but not when the field is on the company object instead. To confirm what object the field in question is on, search for it in Field Management and check what folder it is located in. The folder Info (or Lead Info) contains person fields while company fields are contained within the Company Info folder.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Simulated Live Webinars on GoToWebinar Not Syncing

Browser Displays Not Secure Warning When Viewing Marketo Landing Pages

Boolean Tokens in Create Task and Change Data Value Cause Flow Step to be Skipped

Marketo Sales Insight in SFDC Is Not Sending Email to People as Expected

Smart Campaign Has Leads in a Wait Step That Do Not Show Up in Campaign Members

API User Email Address

Time Is Removed from Flow Step for a Datetime Field

My Tokens Not Inheriting Values from Top-Level Folder

Email URL Is Defaulting to the Fallback Page

Does Marketo Event Check in app support different languages?

Error Occurs When Trying To Edit Formula Field Rules

Set AdWords Conversion button is missing from Stage Actions drop down

Unable to type in form field?

Error: "This field cannot sync with Revenue Explorer"

Do you need to create segments to use the Recommendation Engine?

Troubleshooting Web Personalization (RTP) - Summary Report Issues

State field not pulling picklist from SFDC

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

How to Sync Leads to Salesforce without Assigning a Lead Owner

“Updated At” System Field Not Updating