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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 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 Description An email was sent to leads but immediately returned an 'Email Bounced Soft' Activity Type with the Activity Details stating: 'Details: Empty address: []' Issue Resolution This is due to a token used in the 'From Address' Field in the Email editor that does not have a valid value or valid default value. For example: {{lead.Partner Email:default=edit me}} The Record's field value for 'Partner Email' is Empty. As there is no value for the record the token would use the default value 'edit me' which is not a valid value. A valid value must be an email string format such as mark@eto.com

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 Leads are stuck in a smart campaign's Wait Step and have not moved onto next steps, even though the Wait Step has been updated/shortened and the lead should move onto the next step. Solution When a lead enters a Wait Step, it remains in the Wait Step as defined at the moment they entered it. For example, if the lead enters a 1 week Wait Step, it will remain in the step for 1 week. If the Wait Step is updated to be longer or shorter (for example, shortened to 3 days or extended to 2 weeks), the lead that already entered the Wait Step (when it was 1 week) will remain in the Wait Step for the original duration. New leads entering the Wait Step will abide by the new duration.

Summary If you're using the Bulk Custom Object Import API to push records to a Marketo custom object (and you're importing separate files that have duplicates across the files) -- the records will not be deduped on the custom object if multiple imports are pushed at the same time. Issue If you are using a Bulk Custom Object Import API third party service to push records to a custom object (and multiple files, containing duplicates across those files are being imported to the Marketo custom object in a similar time window) -- the records will not be deduped on the custom object, even if the dedupe field value is matched. This is because two concurrent imports can be processed at the same time if they are pushed close together. More information can be found here. "A maximum of 2 jobs are processed at the same time. A maximum of 10 jobs are allowed in the queue at any given time (including the 2 currently being processed)." Solution In this scenario, the third-party App/API service provider that is making the bulk import calls must be consulted to ensure that separate files containing duplicate records aren't being imported to a Custom Object at the same time (or close together times). Once the calls are spaced out adequately so there aren't concurrent imports running containing duplicate records in separate import files, the custom object will dedupe as expected based on the designated dedupe fields. More on dedupe fields can be found here: "Dedupe fields can be used to retrieve, update, or delete custom objects. Every custom object definition must contain at least one (and no more than three) dedupe fields." In Summary, while Marketo does deduplicate on custom object records at import based on the dedupe field(s), it cannot dedupe when concurrent imports are being processed at the same time with duplicates in the separate files (for example: file 1 has dupe A while file 2 has dupe B). If all the duplicates are in the same file, however, Marketo can dedupe within that file as its imported to the custom object. Root Cause Concurrent Custom Object imports running at the same time: when this occurs, the two files being imported concurrently don't have time to check against each other to dedupe based on the configured dedupe field.

Issue When using the "Sync to Salesforce" flow step and setting up choices, selecting "Do Nothing" uses the Auto-Assignment Rules in Salesforce. Solution This is expected. For this flow step, the choices are basically asking whether the record should be assigned to a specific person or not. When it is not specified (i.e., "Do nothing") the assumption is that you still want the record to be synced to Salesforce, otherwise they would not be in that step, but that there's no particular desire to assign it to a specific person. Thus, since SFDC records need someone to be the owner, the Auto-Assign rules are used by default

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 Is there a way to change the order of tags values, to chose the default values that display when you create a new program? Solution Issue Resolution Tags are sorted in alphabetical order, so the default always ends up being the first alphabetical choice. So for a workaround to make a 'default', you could have it start with the letter A. Example: A-Tag Value (default) B-Tag Value C-Tag Value

Summary The customer wants to know if a nurture email was not sent to a recipient due to communication limit, then will it be sent in the next cast, or that email will not be sent again? Issue Individual(s) were supposed to get an email from a Nurture (Engagement) Program cast but failed to receive the email due to hitting the communication limits set in the instance. Do you need to manually send the email to the individual(s) via a separate Smart Campaign or will it be sent, automatically, on the subsequent cast for the Nurture Program? Environment Marketing Activities Nurture Programs Engagement Programs Admin Communication Limits Solution You don't need to act on these scenarios as the individual(s) impacted by the Communication Limits will be sent the applicable email in the next cast for the Nurture Program. The only reason that the individual wouldn't be sent the email in the subsequent cast for the Nurture Program would be if the person would hit their Comm Limit again. Should that happen, you might want to review your Communication Limits settings or review the individual(s) impacted and see why they keep hitting the Comm Limits. Reference: How Do Communication Limits Work? - Marketing Nation (marketo.com) Root Cause Communication Limits being hit during Nurture Program cast execution

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: When I resize my landing page, the elements on it do not stay in place. Solution: Marketo Landing pages make heavy use of absolute positioning in CSS. This means that you can drag and drop elements wherever you want, but the template needs to be constructed a certain way. If someone has modified your landing page and eliminated certain required elements, it could break this feature. If this happens, contact Marketo Support Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Article Text Explanation: In RTP the tracking is session-based, similar to most web analytics tools. A session starts with the first page view and ends 30 minutes after the last click on the website. For example: Scenario RTP Result Visitor views 1 page on the website and leaves 1 visit & 1 page view Visitor views 2 pages on the website within 30 minutes and then leaves 1 visit / 2 page views Visitor views 1 page on the website, leaves, then returns 45 minutes later and views 1 page 2 visits / 2 page views

Issue What is meant by the socially acquired member of a program such as a webinar program? Solution Leads acquired by the following Social Apps are part of the "Socially Acquired" count - Social Button Youtube video Poll Referrals Sweepstakes If you want to track the number of registrations through social shares, you should consider using the referrals or sweepstake app. These apps allow the users to share and also help you track how many registrations each of your referrers bring in.

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

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Importing Program Status from One Marketo Instance to Another

Delete email from ToutApp live feed

Email Bounced Soft With Details 'Empty address: []'

Changing from Address on Multiple Email Assets at Once

Leads stuck in Wait Step after Wait Step Change

Bulk Custom Object Import API: records not deduping when being added to a custom object

How to Add an Additional Domain for Predictive Content

Sync to Salesforce Flow Step Choice of Do Nothing Uses Auto-Assign

Email Insights Does Not Display Any Metrics for Specific Program

Adding SFDC link to the lead in reports

Sorting Tag Values, Changing the Default Tag Used When Creating a Program

Nurture Program Email Blocked Due To Communication Limits

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

Smart List That Shows Leads Created in Marketo

Content in Landing Page not staying in position

How does Web Personalization (RTP) calculate views and visits?

Socially Acquired Member of a Program

Change Launchpoint Service Display Name

Unable to Create Custom Fields under Opportunity Object

Sync past unsubscribes into SFDC