Contact Marked Email Invalid - No Record in Activity Log

[mtucker1]

We had a customer complain they haven't received any of our marketing emails so I dug into their record in Marketo and found they were marked Email Invalid and the reason was "their account doesn't exist". There is no record in their activity log though that they were marked invalid. 
Does anyone have an explanation for this? Or if I'm okay to uncheck the box if that email is in fact valid? 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Data Value Changed ages out of the Activity Log. So it not being there now doesn't mean it wasn't there originally.

How are you establishing that it's "in fact" valid for Marketo to send to?

[Darshil_Shah1]

Marketo automatically marks an email invalid when it receives a 5XX bounce code, or if the email format is not correct when the person is created, which basically means that the email is not valid. Looking at the reason that you've provided, it appears that either Marketo or your email compliance campaigns (if you have any) determined that the email wasn't valid (after the person encountered the hard bounce) and would have updated the reason to "account doesn't exist". Since you no longer have visibility into the activity, you wouldn't know for sure how (system or campaigns) and why the Email Invalid and Email Invalid Cause fields were updated. Sandy has got the right question for you in his comment above, and it would make sense to try to find a solid reason before updating the email invalid field to true.

[DeniseGreenberg · Accepted solution]

While I agree with Sandy and Darshil, it seems like in this case you DO have a good reason for believing you have a valid email for the customer. That is, I'm assuming they are doing the complaining via email.  If that's true - and if you have verified that the email in Marketo matches the customer's current email - I suggest unchecking Email Invalid and then sending the customer an email as a test (with their knowledge - it seems like they would likely be amenable since they are asking to be on your list). If it goes through successfully you can then empty out the "Reason" field.

[Katja_Keesom]

Totally agree. If the test send results in a bounce again, you will know the exact bounce that occurs and either you or the customer can take action from there to resolve the issue.