ABILITY TO RECALL EMAILS IS IMPORTANT

[Eliza_Tan]

When we make mistakes in emails, Marketo should allow us to recall emails. I think it's really important.

[Robb_Barrett]

Recommended Reading:The Seven "Oops" email moments you will have with Marketo

[Robb_Barrett]

There are a few reasons why this isn't very feasible. Let's start with stating the obvious, that an email is really just a text file shipped from one ESP to another, routed to your user account and stored there. The emails are received regardless of who they're from - there's no middle-ware gatekeeping the email from shipping from one box to another.

Once it arrives, the ESP chooses what to do with it: deliver, block, or move to a folder (ex: Spam). There's some validation done to see if it's really from that sender (DKIM, DCAR) but in reality most emails are received unless the IP sending it is blocked.

Now you have the email somewhere in your email program, be it an inbox, spam folder, etc.  Most email programs then take the step of downloading it to your device so you have it for off-line reading.

This is one MAJOR barrier to recalling. You can recall, but I'm on a plane not connected to internet. I'm going to receive that message.

Another reason is that, as you know, anyone can say that an email is from anyone else. Any one of us here could quite easily send, for example, your mom an email from your email address and she'd be none the wiser. Because there's no REAL credential matching and because Marketo is often used to send emails from different email addresses, there's no way to know that the request to delete the email is real.

For such technology to work, you'd need a way to verify to my email service provider that you delivered the email and that you want to delete it. As stated earlier, an email is nothing more than a text file delivered from one IP address to another and in many cases a person can switch IP addresses at any point in a day so there's no way to certify that you're authorized to delete it.

Now, these two come down to a MAJOR security no-no, which is authorizing a system to remotely delete files from a device without authorization. If technology existed (and I'm not saying it doesn't...) that would allow me to access storage on your phone and choose to delete a file without your consent then what's to stop the Evil Russian Hackers from accessing other files and deleting or downloading them?

In reality, it's very much similar to postal mail. If you accidentally send me a blank check for $10,000 that you meant to send to someone else, you don't exactly have permission to break into my house and take it back, nor am I obligated by anything other than my morals and scruples to return it to you upon request.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Now, these two come down to a MAJOR security no-no, which is authorizing a system to remotely delete files from a device without authorization.

In the interest of completeness ... it's not always like remote deletion in the sense of "making an outbound connection to somebody's mailbox to fish out an email."

That kind of extreme (and of course impossible) action would be necessary when, as with Marketo, you send unsigned SMTP messages.

But if you send signed S/MIME SMTP messages, even over the public net, you can revoke the certificate associated with the message, which is remote invalidation.  Soooo... not the same as remote deletion, but it would mark the message as bad and unreadable.

[Justin_Eichelb1]

While I agree that at face value, Eliza's question is focused on wanting to recall emails after the Marketo campaign has completed the send process and the the emails are officially sent.

But, what about the timeframe when the Send Email flow step is processing and sending the emails?

I know you can abort email programs, but can you abort Send Email flow steps, mid-step?

Here's my example.  A few years ago, a guy on my team calls me up and says "I think I sent it."  My gut hit the floor.  It was a program template of "lorem ipsum dolor" text in the email.  I looked at the campaign and I could see the Results still trying to send the 250K emails.  And I could do nothing to stop it from completing. 

As far as I know, Marketo still does not have an abort feature there.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

You can have process all you want. As Gregoire and Jo said, mistakes will be made. But maybe, we can minimize the damage if we are aware soon enough.

[Scott_McKeighe2]

From what I remember, if you can catch it in time a batch campaign can be aborted mid-flight, but with how fast Marketo can usually process an email send, you'd have to be very fast. And by the time you realize there was an issue, it's usually too late. If you happened to put a wait step in the original workflow, you could create a separate smart campaign that targets your original audience with a Remove From Flow step.

None of that, however, is a stand-in for a QA process that makes sense for your team. And even then, things will still happen. Everyone makes mistakes. You just need to be prepared to understand what happened, take responsibility, and learn from it.

[Anonymous]

I've been using Marketo for 8 years, I've learnt to just never do the 'Run Once'/'Run Now' combo if the campaign involves sending an email. I always schedule the campaign at least 15 mins in advance, even if it's being rushed. There's been too many times where the error is found at the last minute, or some other last minute change comes across.

[Dan_Stevens_]

put a wait step in the original workflow

This is actually a very good idea to include in your email send smart campaigns.  I do this today in my Outlook setup.  I always include a 1 minute delay rule from the time I hit sent to the time it actually leaves my outbox.  There have been just too many times I hit send and say to myself "oh shoot, I wish I would have also included..."; or "maybe I should change the tone/message of my reply".  And many times - based on my fingers clicking faster than my brain, I've found myself clicking the keyboard combination that actually "sends" the email - which results in an incomplete message/reply.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

I hear Sanford Whiteman​ saying, "whatever the wait duration", it will never cover 100% of the cases

Another situation where I put a wait step is on operational email that are fired to either confirm or dismiss registration to an event. Imagine you wanted to dismiss the person and you wrongly sent the "confirm" email... Oops.

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Justin,

A new "abort" feature was just released for email programs sending in recipient timezone. See Abort Delivery of Email Programs Scheduled with Recipient Time Zone - Marketo Docs - Product Documen...

But for a "send email" flow step under delivery, I am afraid that is still not possible. Deleting the smart campaign might have some effect, but I do not want to send an erroneous email to 200k people just for the sake of testing it

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

My vision of this one:

"If you have never sent an apology email to your database for a previous email error, you have not really started email marketing" You can quote me on this!

@Eliza Tan,

It will not solve your problem, but I can guarantee with all my experience (8 years on Marketo, 20 years as a Marketer, a CMO and a Marketing consultant) it has happened or will happen to every one who is seriously using high-level IT tools to send emails to large audience.

Believe that everyone in the community understands your frustration because we have all been there or are afraid of being there in the future.

-Greg

[Balkar_Singh]

This really summarizes this up very well. We're working in a pretty unstructured environment, and there could be lot of ways to get into errors. While the intention is never to make errors, experimenting involves it. We've seen Marketo's domain issue, and a serious production down time last year. We do see giants making errors. While the discussion is hot, we do know the examples of companies who sent a preference center email to records who unsubscribed. There's a common theme in all these mistakes. These are big brands - Marketo, Honda, Amazon - which also suffered a cloud networking issue about a year ago. These are all followed up by apologies, and rectification efforts.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Couple of weeks back, I got an apology from our cololocation provider saying, "In a recent email, we revealed customer information, which is against our policy."

Curious about what they meant, and figuring it had to do with sending corporate information to us over (unencrypted) SMTP, I went searching in my trash. I found the message and realized what they meant: they'd CC'd hundreds of their customers' technical contacts, so I instantly knew a huge chunk of their customer base (some of whom were quite prestigious, which was cool!).

Now there's something you don't have to worry about w/Marketo. 

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Balkar+

To the point that learning how to write a good apology email should be part of any email marketing 101 course

-Greg

[Jo_Pitts1]

Eliza,

Adding to Sanford Whiteman​'s (accurate) comments about the fact that SMTP has no support for message recall, and therefore neither can Marketo, what this speaks to is the need for great processes.

In the past I have run teams where we had checklists which had to be filled in and signed off by two people.  We didn't let the 'filling in' be with initials or ticks (way to easy to run through a list going tick tick tick), but with actual outcomes (so screen shots from device tests, names used to test personalisation, etc.).  We'd then send internal test emails to the account service team , and then external test emails to the client which also had to be signed off with whatever process they felt appropriate before the campaign would be allowed out the door.  This got us very close to perfection, but even then mistakes happen.

The trick is to have a process that acknowledges that mistakes happen and speaks to what you will do in that instance; making sure you have a copywriter available to craft an apology/retraction/whatever is needed, making sure you send campaigns at a time that means you have resource to build the audience and get the next email out the door (with all the testing and sign offs you'd normally do) if there is a SNAFU to be dealt with, and potentially resend the original email to a different audience if needed.

Regards

Jo

[SanfordWhiteman]

"Recalling" emails over the public internet has never been, and will never be, possible... and all-caps can't change that.

You're probably confusing public SMTP with a feature of private messaging systems such as Exchange, Notes, etc. where the client can request the server revoke access to other client mailboxes before they're viewed. You have no such control over my own inbox.

[Jamie-Carey]

Hey Sanford, I can understand why someone may be upset due to an email sent out with a mistake. We should all remember what that feels like. Your reply to Aliza comes across condescending because you tone policed her-It's important to maintain a friendly community. It would be more helpful to explain how Marketo doesn't have control over recalling an email-it's a common request.  I can appreciate you know the answer here though.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Jamie - most people that post here on the community are doing so to resolve an issue, ask for help, figure out why something doesn't work in Marketo, etc.  This community topic is no different.  All Sanford said was using ALL-CAPS isn't going to help resolve the issue (with a smiley face emoticon to make it clear that this is just a friendly reminder on proper community etiquette).  I didn't find it condescending at all.  He then clearly stated the technical reason why this is technically not possible using an email platform like Marketo (vs. a closed system like Exchange/Outlook).