Knowledgebase

Featured article

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

Featured article

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

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 A lead was not sent an email by a Smart Campaign even though they should have qualified for the Smart List. Solution * Check if the lead has reached the daily or weekly communication limit. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Enable+Communication+Limits https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Apply+Communication+Limits+to+Smart+Campaign * Check if the lead has a duplicate lead with the same email address that was sent an email already. * Check if the campaign is set to qualify leads only once. If the lead has ran through the campaign previously when it had different flow steps, then the lead cannot qualify for the campaign again even though the flow steps have changed. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Edit+Qualification+Rules+in+a+Smart+Campaign * If all leads in the campaign were not processed, check if there is a campaign restriction. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Enable+Person+Restrictions+for+Smart+Campaigns

Issue After the campaign is run for deleting leads, the result tab shows as "No activities found". Solution Whenever a lead is deleted using a Smart Campaign, the results tab will not show the list of leads that got deleted as they are not available in the database anymore. However, with the help of "Run History" tab you will be able to see the number of the leads that got deleted. Once the campaign is run and the "Delete Person" flow step is executed, the lead will be deleted immediately from the Marketo database.

Issue Issue Description Marketo will allow you created a new asset in the shared folder and the new asset will show in the parent folder. However, when you try to make changes the new email or landing page, Marketo will give you an error saying that you have insufficient privilege. Note: Folders that are shared will have a little padlock on them to show that they are shared. Solution Issue Resolution The reason why you are getting this error message is because shared folders are read-only. Since they are read-only, all users (including Admin users) will get the error message of insufficient privilege. If you want to make changes to the new assets, you will need to edit them in the parent folder. The parent folder will have a green arrow pointing up.

Issue Importing programs from one Marketo instance to another doesn't bring program membership with the program Solution There is not a direct way to import the program membership. However this can still be identified by exporting the original program membership from the first instance to a CSV file. This file can then be imported to a static list in the new instance to identify these records.Then the records can be processed either manually or by batch campaign to update the campaign membership status.

Issue A form submission occurs with missing or no information provided, including required fields like email address or first/last name. Solution When you notice a record submitted a form without the required information, like email address, there can be one of two likely causes: This is a bot. A bot can circumnavigate any required fields, even hidden ones, because they are not loading the necessary Javascript on the form to enforce these rules. Therefore, they can fill out a form with no values. This is a person with Javascript disabled in their browser. This would create a similar situation as the first point, meaning they can choose to fill out whichever fields they want, or none at all, because the script that enforces which fields must be filled out is not loaded.

Issue After an email send, the number of emails sent is much lower than the number of people that qualified for the email. Solution Issue Resolution One possible reason you are seeing a different number of emails sent versus the number of people that qualified for that is email is because of communication limits. If a person qualifies for an email, Marketo will try to send it. However, if a lead has already reached their daily or weekly communication limit, Marketo will not send the email (with the exemption of operational emails). To check to see if a lead did not get an email due to communication limits, follow the steps at Email Program Fails to Send Emails.

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 Changing From address on multiple email assets at once instead of one-by-one by hand. Solution You can use program/folder tokens as the from address, and then change the token. Once the token changes it will update the assets using the token. For any pre-existing emails, updates in bulk could be made through a API call to the Marketo API endpoint - http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/assets/emails/#create_and_update.

Issue When attempting to publish a landing page to Facebook, you get the error "Error when calling Social Campaign API. Warnings: Error while creating facebook tab." Solution If you haven't purchased Ad Targeting add-on for your instance, you could face this issue. You can contact your Customer Success Manager to include this add-on in your Marketo subscription. If you are facing the issue in spite of having ad targeting add on to your subscription, we would suggest that you contact Marketo support and we will be able to troubleshoot it for you.

Issue You attempt to approve an asset and receive a "Cannot update a stale object" error. Solution This error means that a newer version of the asset exists than the one you started with. This occurs most often with large teams or if you edit an asset in multiple tabs. When you edit an asset, it creates a draft. Another attempt to edit the asset while the previous draft is open would create a new draft, which then causes your first draft to become "stale." Refreshing your screen should resolve this issue and allow you to approve the asset.

Issue Communication Failure is displayed when trying to swap an image in a section of the email. Solution This is known to occur when the email contains a significant amount of elements configured with dynamic content. These elements refer to subject, hero-banner, cta-button, etc. For example, for an email that contains 10 elements with 50 segments (used for dynamic content), there are at least 500 versions (i.e. 10 elements multiplied by 50 segments) of the email that need to be updated when an element is updated (e.g. swapping an image) In order to avoid the communication failure or be able to swap an image, try reducing the number of elements configured with dynamic content (i.e. make some elements static where possible.)

Issue Email Insights does not display any data or metrics for a specific program when the emails in the program are operational. Solution Operational emails are hidden by default, so no data or metrics will be shown in Email Insights unless 'Operational Emails' are included "Does Email Insights support Operational emails? Yes. By default, Operational emails are hidden from view and querying. However, you may change this setting under the Personal Settings panel." https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Email+Insights+FAQ

Issue You have recently added a new field to a SFDC Custom Object which is synced to Marketo, but you do not see that new field available on the object in Marketo. Solution To have the new fields pulled over to Marketo, disable your SFDC global sync within Marketo and then refresh schema for custom objects. This should pull over the new fields on that custom object to Marketo. Once the schema is refreshed, please make sure that the global sync is turned back on. We would also suggest that you refer the below document which will guide you on the above steps. However, the below document is meant for first custom object sync. The same steps need to follow up for the existing object sync as well. SFDC Sync: Custom Object Sync

Issue Sometimes, you may receive an auto response from an email that has been sent through a batch campaign. The auto response email will not show the lead's email address instead it does contain the HTML of the email along with the Marketo decorated link. Is there a way to decipher this to determine which lead record this corresponds to? Solution You could try opening a new browser window and either clear your cookies first or use the browser's private browsing feature (makes a cookie sandbox) so you don't confuse Marketo and tie that person's lead to you by accident. Anyways, in your cookie-free browser, click the link and then go to a form that Marketo prefills for you and you may see the email address that was originally targeted.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Predictive Content Query Parameters

Syncing with SFDC Big Objects

Email mailto: Link Not Working

Smart Campaign Did Not Send an Email to a Lead

Delete Leads Smart Campaign Showing No Results

Can’t Edit a New Asset Created in a Shared Folder

Importing Program Status from One Marketo Instance to Another

Form Submission Has No Fields Filled In

Seeing a Lower Number of Emails Sent Than People That Qualified for a Campaign or Email Program

Merge Fails When Trying to Merge a Lead with a Contact

Email Server Used When Sending Tout Emails from Salesforce

Changing from Address on Multiple Email Assets at Once

Unable to Create Custom Fields under Opportunity Object

Error Publishing Marketo Landing Page to Facebook

“Cannot Update a Stale Object” Error When Editing an Asset

My Tokens in Not Working Choice Steps

Communication Failure Is Displayed When Trying to Swap an Image in a Section of the Email

Email Insights Does Not Display Any Metrics for Specific Program

New Fields Created on SFDC Custom Object Not Found in Marketo

Determine Lead Record Using a Decorated Email Link