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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 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.

Summary New checkbox for query parameters available when adding new content or editing current content. Issue You were previously unable to specify query parameters for predictive content, and query parameters were not used when adding new content, editing current content, and reporting on URL clicks. Autodiscovery works by adding a new URL to the DB, and later on, clicking counts are accumulated against the newly found asset. The asset is determined based on the URL (and there, it previously didn't account for anything that followed the ? in the URL. The same was used as a validation when a user added new content. The rule to determine this part of the URL, minus the query parameters, was a requirement back then and was taken into account during design. Solution As you add predictive content from the predictive content page, you need to have the checkbox on this page to allow the user to decide whether they want to include/exclude the query parameters while adding it. The same thing should be followed for editing predictive content as well. Engineering built a nuanced approach that provided flexibility to include or exclude query patterns in determining a unique URL and added a feature to include query parameters when manually creating a piece of content. It should rightly identify the right asset to record clicks/views against as well.

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 want to set a field such as "Country" to be required on a list import. Solution You cannot require a field to be included on a list import. To see any leads imported recently with blank values you can setup a Smart List with a subscription Filters -- Lead was created Source Type - Import [Field you are wanting to watch] is Empty You could setup a daily subscription to get the leads who qualify and then correct those leads as needed.

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 Are Smart List filters that accept text values case-sensitive (e.g. First Name, Last Name)? Solution Smart list filters are NOT case-sensitive. For example: If you use the smart list filter 'First Name is John', it will return leads with First Name 'John' or 'john' with a lower case 'j' Vice versa: If you use the smart list filter 'First Name is john', it will return leads with First Name 'john' or 'John' with an upper case 'j'

Issue When a piece of predictive content is approved the following error appears: "Action failed. Please contact support. Error code:24 Error message: Invalid email title Error message: internal error, reported to support." Solution Change the title of the content to less than 48 characters. This error indicates that the title for the content is too long. The maximum number of characters for a title in content AI is 48 characters.

Summary Building a Smart List or Report for Merge Activities within time frame Issue You're looking to have a Smart List or Report built to gather insights on what merges, if any, took place within your database over a given time frame. Environment Marketo Smart List Reporting/Analytics Database API Solution Marketo doesn't have native capabilities to report on Merge activities that take place within your database, either via Smart List filters or within the Analytics section of Marketo. This is due to the activity type surrounding the merging of leads, Merge Leads, not being an attribute available for filters or reporting. The only way to go about getting a sort of list or report of the various merges that took place is to utilize the self-service Bulk Activity API endpoint and filter/specify the desired timeframe that you're wanting to look at. Please partner/consult with your Developer to go about building the job necessary to accommodate this. Below are two resources available on our Marketo Developer site to assist and offer guidance as needed. Resource(s): Bulk Activity Extract documentation Bulk Activity Extract endpoint reference(s) Root Cause Marketo doesn't offer the ability to filter off the Activity Type of Merge Leads.

Issue Field values updated in Marketo do not sync to SFDC when the record exists as a Contact. Environment Marketo - CRM Native contact Sync Solution The issue is caused by the interaction of the Block Field Updates with the conflict resolution rules for Contacts described here. The Block Field Updates will prevent Marketo from writing values from Salesforce into Marketo, but it does not prevent the sync from attempting to sync those values. If a field has Block Field Updates enabled to prevent updates from SFDC and that fields gets updated in both Marketo and Salesforce at the same time, Marketo will attempt to use our conflict resolutions rules to allow the update from SFDC to override the Marketo updated. The Block Field Update prevents this from occurring which leaves the records stuck unable to update the value in either system. To resolve the issue for the specific records, the Block Field Updates setting must be removed for the specific values to allow the values from Salesforce to sync down. Then the feature can be re-enabled. To prevent recurrences of the issue in the future, Users and processes in Salesforce must be prevented from editing those values to prevent a conflict from occurring.

Issue Salesforce is going to change your instance sub-domain from NA#1.salesforce.com to NA#2.salesforce.com. What measures should you take in order to make sure that our sync works? Solution Marketo accesses SFDC with the API login endpoint, so a change in the login domain that you use would not affect the Sync user. Marketo and SFDC sync should continue to work irrespective what domain SFDC belongs to. If a change happened to SFDC that affected the sync user, such as its credentials or the SFDC OrgID changed, then Marketo would need to be updated If there is an issue with your sync after updating the SFDC domain, try the following to resolve the issuce. Change your SFDC Sync User's password. Issue a new security token. Re-enter the credentials within Marketo Admin >Salesforce. If it doesnt resolve the sync issue, contact Marketo support and they will be able to help you out.

Issue You would like to know which partition a record that was captured by using "Forward to a friend link" in an email will be created in. Solution The record will be created under the partition which is associated with the work space under which the email asset is present. The record will not be created under the default partition. For example, if you have a workspace named "Asia" which is connected with the partition named "APAC", then leads created via Forward-to-Friend links in emails stored in the "Asia" will be created in the "APAC" partition.

Issue An email appears to have been sent twice to the same lead when it should not have been. Solution It appears that the record was sent the email twice because the record was merged with another record after the email was sent. So when the email was sent, the record was two separate records that was sent the email individually. This can be identified by looking at the record's activity log for a 'Merge People' activity

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.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Simulated Live Webinars on GoToWebinar Not Syncing

Sydney Datacenter Email Send Disruption 11/12/2018

Predictive Content Query Parameters

State field not pulling picklist from SFDC

Setting a Field to Be Required on List Import

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

My Tokens Not Inheriting Values from Top-Level Folder

Smart List Filters Case-Sensitivity

ContentAI - Error 24

Error: "This field cannot sync with Revenue Explorer"

Reporting on Merge Activities

Block Field Updates not syncing marketo field values to SFDC

Email Dashboard not Displaying Accurate Data

Change in SFDC Instance Domain

New Lead Created by 'Forward to a Friend Link' Is Not in Default Partition

Email Was Sent Twice to One Record

API User Email Address

Time Is Removed from Flow Step for a Datetime Field

Webinar Emails From Marketo to Marketo Users

Marketo SOAP API PHP client