Domain Alias Not Working

[Anonymous]

I am trying to set up a domain alias. I followed the instructions outlined in this article: Add Additional Landing Page CNAMEs - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation but it still doesn't seem to be working correctly so I'm hoping someone on here can help me identify the problem.

We are trying to set up a domain alias for a brand new domain: www.bbitestlabs.com. We have simply just purchased that domain, there is not an actual website tied to it.

We got our IT team to set up the CNAME as follows: CNAME www.bbitestlabs.com -> bbitestlabs.mktoweb.com

When I go into set up the domain alias I am typing it as bbitestlabs.com without the www and http://. And it's not working. I'm getting an error message that says the IP address isn't found. Can anyone offer some insight onto which piece of the puzzle I'm missing?

Thanks,

Courtney

[SanfordWhiteman]

We got our IT team to set up the CNAME www.bbitestlabs.com -> bbitestlabs.mktoweb.com

This wasn't actually completed.

www.bbittestlabs.com has two A records pointing to these 2 IP addresses:

www.bbitestlabs.com. 10 IN A 198.105.244.11
www.bbitestlabs.com. 10 IN A 104.239.213.7

Note that the same hostname cannot simultaneously appear in on the left-hand-side of an A record and left-hand-side of a CNAME. It's one or the other. And 10 seconds is a very low (unacceptably so unless during transition, where it's okay) TTL value.

The zone apex is also an A

bbitestlabs.com. 600 IN A 50.63.202.59

[Anonymous]

Great, this is very helpful. I don't have as much experience in the developer/IT side of Marketo yet. Would you mind helping me better understand what exactly it is that I need to tell my IT person to do to correct this issue?

[SanfordWhiteman]

If, as Jim suggests, you're trying to use an account string that doesn't actually exist, there's nothing for IT to do.

[Jim_Thao7 · Accepted solution]

is your Account String correct (bbitestlabs)?  I noticed it's the same as your new domain, which may be a coincidence, but wanted to ask.

[Anonymous]

We need the Account String to be different. We are trying to set up this new domain so it's not associated with our other brand whatsoever. The Account string has the other brands name in it. Is this even possible?

[Jim_Thao7]

I'm not sure if you can have 2 account strings attached to the same account.  Did you grab the Account Name from your Admin>Landing Pages section or is this made up to match your domain alias?

[Anonymous]

Jim and Sanford,

Thank you both for your help! After looking at everything over again, I realized that the issue is that the account string was set up incorrectly, and it's ok if the account string has our other brand in it because the account string doesn't actually appear in the URL that our visitors will be using to access our landing pages. Sorry for the confusion and thanks again for the help!

[SanfordWhiteman]

True, the account string would be found via DNS lookup (in a strict brand division this would be a problem), not in the Location bar.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The Account string has the other brands name in it. Is this even possible?

No... the only thing you can do (and this is by special request w/Support) is change to a completely generic account string that isn't readily traceable to any brand.

(But more to the point, even if bbitestlabs.mktoweb.com were your account string, your IT team created another CNAME for it.)