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Included in this article Overview Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Hard Bounces Soft Bounces Bounce Details Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields 2. Create a Program to house everything 3. Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details Overview Bounce activities carry details for why the email was bounced, but it’s housed within the activity log entry, not in a field on the lead record, so it’s difficult to export that data. This article will show you how to extract that information to create a directory of leads bouncing emails and how to make the list automatically update. This will also create counters for bounces and successful re-deliveries after bounces happen. Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Email bounces come in different types depending on why the email was bounced; Hard Bounces or Soft Bounces. Hard Bounces Hard Bounces come in two types, Category 1 and Category 2. Category 1 bounces are emails that have been marked as spam by the recipient mail server. Many email servers monitor blacklists or spam traps, so after de-listing with them, leads that have had a Category 1 bounce previously may be able to receive emails again. Category 2 bounces occur due to an email address that is invalid or doesn’t exist. Soft Bounces Soft Bounces come in three different types, Categories 3, 4 or 9. Category 3 bounces are usually temporary, caused by full mailboxes, timeouts, or throttling. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 4 bounces are caused by technical problems, Transient Failures, Admin Failures, DNS Failures. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 9 bounces are unknown, undetermined or gibberish details. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Bounce Details When an email is bounced, the recipient mail server includes details of why it was bounced. These are created by the admin of the recipient mail server and vary greatly, but most will give some explanation that can give valuable information. Email Bounce Codes Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields You’ll need 6 custom fields, two DateTime fields, two Score fields, and two String fields Name the DateTime fields “Bounce Date” and “Email Delivered After Bounce”. Name the Score fields “Email Bounces” and “Deliveries After Bounces” Name the String fields “Email Bounce Details” and “Email Bounce Category” Directions for creating Custom Fields can be found here: Create a Custom Field in Marketo 2. Create a Program to house everything Use a default program type and name it "Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails". Info on creating programs can be found here: Create a Program 3. Create a Static List This static list will be your actual directory that contains all of the leads that are currently bouncing emails. Name it "Active Bounce List". Info on creating a static list can be found here: Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns These two Smart Campaigns are what will be used to add and remove leads from your active bounce list. Info on creating Smart Campaigns can be found here: Create a New Smart Campaign Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Your first Smart Campaign will be used to listen for any email bounces that occur. The campaign will populate the “Bounce Date”, “Email Bounce Category” and “Email Bounce Details” fields. It will then add one point to the “Email Bounces” score field which can be used to count how many bounces have occurred per lead. Lastly, the campaign will add the lead to the static list which will be an active directory of leads who are bouncing emails. Campaign Smart List Use the two triggers of “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft” in the Smart List. Set both triggers to “is any” so that they will fire whenever any email bounces for any reason. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 5 flow steps. The flow will use a System Token and some Trigger Tokens, which can be used to pull details out of the action that activated the trigger. In this case, the Trigger Tokens will be pulling out the details on why the emails were bounced. That info is in the bounce message and is logged in the lead's activity log. Normally you'd have to comb through the activity log one at a time to find these details for each individual lead. This method, however, will pull the details out automatically for all leads. Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Bounce Date” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Data Value. Attribute: “Email Bounce Category” New Value: {{trigger.category}} Flow Step 3: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Bounce Details” New Value: {{trigger.details}} Flow Step 4: Change Score Score Name: “Email Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 5: Add to List List Name: “Active Bounce List” Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries Campaign Smart List The Smart List of the campaign will need a trigger for “Email is Delivered” set to “is any” and also a filter of “Member of List” looking just for leads that belong to your Static List. This way, the campaign will only apply to leads who have had an email bounce but have then had an email successfully delivered afterwards. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 3 flow steps to do the following; log when the email was delivered, add a point to the "Deliveries After Bounce" Score Field, and remove the lead from the "Active Bounce List". Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Delivered After Bounce” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Score Score Name: “Deliveries After Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 3: Remove from List List Name: Operational.Active Bounce List 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details The custom fields you’ve created for email bounce information won’t show automatically in the view of your list. You can create a new view of the list to show just this information so that when it is exported it will give you only the email bounce information you need. Once the list has the necessary details, it can be exported with those columns included so that you can work with it. You can identify emerging trends and issues with your deliverability by looking for common themes among the bounce details. Directions for creating Custom Views can be found here

Featured article

(Article Updated - August 2024) Overview A blocklist is a database of IP addresses or domains that have been associated with the sending of unsolicited commercial email or spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and business email networks use information from blocklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop to inbox delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blocklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blocklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When an impactful listing occurs, we reach out to the blocklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blocklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blocklists, most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below, we have compiled a list of the blocklists that commonly appear across our sender ecosystem. Each blocklist has been grouped into a top tier (Tier I) by most impactful, to the bottom least impactful tier (Tier III). These may have little to no impact across our sender network. Tier I Blocklist Spamhaus (SBL) Impact: Spamhaus is the only blocklist that we categorize as a Tier I for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery. It is the most well-respected and widely used blocklist in the world. A listing at Spamhaus will have a negative effect on your ability to deliver emails to your customer’s inbox and can cause bounce rates of over 50%. Evidence suggests that most of the top North American ISPs use Spamhaus to inform blocking decisions. How it works: Unlike many blocklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and base listings on a number of variables. Most commonly senders are listed for mailing to spam trap addresses that Spamhaus owns. Sometimes Spamhaus will list senders based on recipient feedback as well. Next Steps: Please note that every Spamhaus email can be quite different depending on the information provided and the nature of the listing . Because Spamhaus has multiple types of listings, the remediation steps are based on which type of blocklisting has occurred. We have listed the most common types to affect Marketo customers, from most to least impactful. Impact can range from a full block of top severity, to a partial block that is less severe (CSS Data, DBL). If remediation isn’t performed and the problem not addressed, these listings can increase in severity and turn into a full blocklisting. Spamhaus Blocklistings Types SBL (full blocklisting) Considered the most impactful. Remediation steps: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. Once alerted to the listing, we send an email notifying the customer, and reach out to the Spamhaus contact to start the remediation process. Only a Marketo delivery team member should be in direct correspondence with the Spamhaus contact, to speak on behalf of the customer, and to relay their questions and instructions, ensuring quick resolution and reduced impact. Senders that trigger this listing on a shared IP range will be moved to a more isolated, penalty range (IPB), so as not to impact the other shared senders. Those affected on a Dedicated IP, only impact their own sending and will not be moved. However, depending on the severity of the issue, our team may need to revoke a customer’s ability to send any emails until full resolution. The listing will last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. SBL CSS Customers are alerted of the listing with an email containing all the information needed to immediately begin the remediation process. This is part of an automated trigger listing, that allows for a customer to delist directly on the Spamhaus website, after they’ve completed remediation. Remediation steps: Customers will go to the Spamhaus IP lookup website, at https://check.spamhaus.org, where they can check on the status of their IP and continue to monitor it in real time, until it is no longer listed there. Follow the remediation and delisting instructions provided, and check for specific details in the blocklist notification email. DBL (Domain blocklisting) Customers will receive an email notification alerting of the company domain being listed. The email will contain specific information to help narrow down and identify which email source likely triggered it within Marketo. It’s important to note that any email sent from outside of Marketo, that contained the company domain, is suspect. This means, if the sender uses multiple IPs and/multiple email platforms, then any of those could be the source. Remediation steps: Follow the detailed instructions in the email, which will also provide a link to the Spamhaus Domain reputation checker webpage, to check the real time listing status of the affected domain. Once the email source is identified and cause addressed, this customer will follow the online instructions to request to be delisted. Tier II Blocklist SpamCop Impact: SpamCop is not used by any of the major North American ISPs to inform blocking decisions, but it makes it to the Tier II list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. SpamCop is considered a Tier I one blocklist for B2B marketers but a Tier II for B2C marketers. SpamCop is a dynamic IP blocklist, that can affect a single IP or a subset of IPs Typically, the block will automatically lift within one business day, but can take longer for relisted IPs. To have triggered a SpamCop listing likely means the sender has a list management problem that should be addressed. How it works: SpamCop lists IPs for one of two reasons: Either the email hit SpamCop spam trap addresses OR A SpamCop user has reported the email unwanted. Most of SpamCop’s spam traps are previously valid addresses that have not been active for 12 months or longer. Remediation steps: If you are seeing a significant number of bouncing emails caused by a SpamCop blocked IP but aren’t sure if your email activity triggered the listing, first identify whether you are sending on a shared sender network or not. If sending from a shared IP range when this occurs, you or any other customer sending from the same network may have contributed to the IP block. This IP block will automatically get dropped within a business day. For those on a Dedicated IP that trigger a listing, refer to the above remediation steps and resources, to address the list management issue. Tier III Blocklist (Low/ No impact ) These are considered the lowest tier and therefore cause the least impact across the Marketo sender ecosystem. Some of these blocklists were more impactful at one time, while others are only impactful based on the sender region (Manitu). Others still can suddenly flare up (Lashback). There are also many blocklists that are ignored (0spam), and are not taken seriously because they do not provide any means to delist once on the list (NoSolicitado) or that they charge money to have the listing removed ( UCEPROTECT ). The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry. When using blocklist tool checkers, such as MXToolBox, many blocklists will appear, but very few are relevant. Here is our selection of Blocklists you may come across that are least impactful: Project Honey Pot SpamAssassin URIBL/SURBL DrMX PSBL 0spam HostKarma Ascams ZapBL Barracuda Trendmicro Inc. Cloudmark Proofpoint Invaluement ISP Blocklists Some ISPs use internal blocklists to make blocking decisions. Examples include AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail. If your IP is being blocked by one of these networks, and those networks have a large presence in your lists, a block of this kind could have a noticeable negative impact on delivery. Marketo monitors for significant ISP blocks. Those experiencing deliverability issues with emails not making it to the Inbox and bulking in the spam folder may benefit from additional services with our Email Delivery Consultants. Remediation Steps: Email Delivery Compliance Team works to resolve any ISP blocks. ISP blocks are are usually resolved or lifted within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Customers experiencing significant blocks for Microsoft domains (outlook.com, live.com, microsoft.com), can submit a request to the delivery team to seek mitigation on their behalf. Additional Resources: Blocklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blocklist remediation Blocklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blocklist?

Issue You encounter a "Couldn't connect to host" SFDC sync error. Environment Salesforce Solution This is a message returned by Salesforce to Marketo indicating that for some time, Salesforce couldn't be accessed because the SFDC servers were temporarily down. This could be caused by transient SFDC Server issues/outages but is most commonly caused due to scheduled Salesforce database maintenance. When these errors occur, Marketo will continue to sync to SFDC where it last left off once the Salesforce servers are back up and running - however, this only applies to records already syncing with SFDC. If any records affected by this sync error were attempting to initially sync (through "Sync person to SFDC" flow steps, for example), then the flow steps need to be run again to push any of those records to SFDC for the first time. The global background sync works on its own and will automatically retry to sync any recently updated records (that were already previously syncing with SFDC) after the Salesforce server outage has been resolved. Root Cause Server outage or scheduled maintenance on SFDC servers

Issue Issue Description When attempting to utilize date filter in RCE, the pick-list for available dates is only showing dates in the past, not current dates. Solution Issue Resolution The date pick-list retrieves the first 1200 values, starting with the oldest, in order to load efficiently for pick-list values. To return more recent dates, an additional type of date filter is needed to limit the selections to display more current dates. Using a filter of Year and narrowing the filter down to a few years will allow you to retrieve dates within the more recent time frame.

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

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

Issue 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 try to merge two records in Marketo, one SFDC Lead and one SFDC Contact, and the merge fails. Solution When you are trying to merge a Ccontact record with a Lead record and the Lead record is losing record, Salesforce will try to convert that Lead record to Contact and merge both records in SFDC and Marketo. If the Marketo Sync User in Salesforce does not have permission to convert the SFDC Lead to a Contact, the merge will fail in Salesforce and in Marketo. To see if this is the problem, log into SFDC using the Marketo Sync User credentials and try to merge the records in SFDC. If you cannot merge the records while logged in as the Sync User this means that the Sync User does not have permissions in SFDC to covert a Lead to a Contact. To resolve this ask your Salesforce Admin to change the permissions on the Marketo Sync User to allow it to convert leads.

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.

Summary UTM Parameters Not Populating with Known People Form Fill Issue UTM parameter field values are not being captured for some people's form submissions, even though the form is configured to capture the values. Solution When a form is using the "Show Custom HTML Form for Known People", the submission button will generate a Filled out Form activity, but will not write any new field values. When attempting to capture UTM parameters with the feature enabled, those UTM values, as well as the other fields on that form, will not be captured. Show Custom HTML Form for Known People | Adobe Marketo Engage

Issue Often times variables are used in emails and guided landing pages for marketers to quickly and easily change a link URL in a CTA button. However these links cannot be made dynamic when used with a variable. Solution The variable needs to be removed and replaced with an editable section or a rich text element. Once this is done the editable section or rich text element can be made dynamic. This will require some prior knowledge of HTML as the code of the asset itself will need to be changed. The links below will guide you through the syntax that needs to be used to modify your HTML. Create a Guided Landing Page Template Email Template Syntax

Issue You are trying to manually edit a lead record to remove the value of the Email field but the change doesn't save. Solution Marketo enforces this as a required field for deduplication purposes and won't allow a direct manual edit as a preventative measure. Removing the field can create duplicates, so it's generally recommended that instead of removing the field you maintain the record in your CRM or mark this record as marketing suspended to avoid inadvertent communications. However, if you need to remove the value there are two workarounds to this issue. 1) Create a smart campaign with smart list criteria that isolates that specific lead record, with a Change Data Value flow step. Specify Email as the attribute and the New Value as NULL. This will clear out the value for that field. 2) You can remove the email address from that record in your CRM. Marketo treats your CRM as the source of authority, so removing that value in your CRM will sync down to Marketo during the next sync cycle.

Issue You are trying to access the Marketo site, but keep reaching a screen telling you your browser encountered an error. These error messages include: "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE" or "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN" Solution Flush the DNS Cache on your local machine. To do so: Open Windows command prompt as admin (you can do this by searching for command prompt in Windows, then right clicking it and selecting "run as administrator") Run the command: ipconfig /flushdns The command will return a simple completed message or will prompt you for another command when it is done Re-open your browser and go to the site you wanted to reach Please note: The DNS Cache is cleared on a normal reboot too. However, the hosts file on your computer will be used during startup to put in new DNS entries, so it will never appear completely empty if you open cache.

Issue When using the [mktorest.com/rest/asset/v1/emailTemplates.json] end-point to pull all Email templates, the COUNT is much less than what is shown in Marketo's Design Studio Global Search. Solution This is the expected behavior. When viewing the total count of Email templates in the Design Studio UI, it will count EACH shared template that is shared across other workspaces, counting the same template multiple times depending on how many workspaces it's shared to. However, when retrieving the Email Templates from the REST API, it will only return DISTINCT Email Template ID's from the originating shared workspace where the template resides. It will not return the templates from the shared workspaces. Root Cause REST API Expected Behavior

Issue You are trying to edit an existing email template, and it has the status of "Approved with Draft" However the draft is not showing up in menu tree and when you try to edit and save, you get the error "Not Allowed – Template already has a draft." Solution Issue Resolution Refresh the browser or check is the draft is opened in another window. Try logging out and logging back in Try using a different browser to check it further Check if there is a template with the same name that exists elsewhere (Design Studio) Rename the template and check if that is working If the issue persists, please reach out to Marketo Support for further assistance

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 (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

Issue You want to customize the error message shown if a form field is left blank or the wrong type of data is entered. Solution Open the form in Design Studio and select the field you want to update the validation message for. Select "Validation Message" on the right hand side of the screen. In the dropdown menu, select "Custom instead of the default "Standard" and enter your custom error message.

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.

Add the below code to a custom HTML block, update the name in bold to the name of the field. Replace the **** with the word "script" <**** type="text/javascript"> (document).getElementsByName('FIELDNAME')[0].removeAttribute('checked'); </*****> Please ensure that you have access to an experienced JavaScript developer. Marketo Technical Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting JavaScript. Here's a sample page: info.dbmayberry.com/noinitialbutonvaluechecked.html

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

SFDC sync error: "couldn't connect to host"

Date range filter in RCE only returning old dates

How to identify where the "delete person" flow step is used

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

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

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

Merge Fails When Trying to Merge a Lead with a Contact

How to Sync Leads to Salesforce without Assigning a Lead Owner

UTM Parameters Not Populating on Form Submission with Show Custom HTML for Known People Enabled

Can Variables in Emails/Guided Landing Pages Be Made Dynamic?

Cannot Manually Remove Value of Email Field

Unable to Access Marketo - Errors DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN and ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE in Windows

Is it possible to use universal ID for API user

Email Template Count Different in UI When Compared to REST API Count

Email Template Has a Draft That Is Not Showing Up in the Navigation Tree

ToutApp: Object reference exception error in Outlook

Customizing the Error Message (Validation Message) on a Form

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

Set radio button to no initial value

Smart Campaign Returns N/A Existing People When Viewing the Leads Affected