Major email deliverability issues

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Major email deliverability issues

We’ve been noticing over the past several months that our email performance is extremely poor.  In fact, I’m having doubts that our emails are even making it to our recipients’ inboxes (even though they are being marked as delivered in Marketo).  I decided to give Litmus a try and found that our Postini score (the server-side spam filter that many large corporations use) was a dismal .51953 (out of 100)!  This leads me to believe that many Postini servers are flagging Marketo email as spam.  Are others experiencing issues like this (if your audiences consists of large corporations)?  Does Marketo run tests on their shared servers to ensure companies like us aren’t negatively impacted by other customers who may indeed be sending spam?
 
Tags (1)
10 REPLIES 10
Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Major email deliverability issues

are you sure that it is .51 and not 51?
http://www.emailonacid.com/blog/details/C13/emailology_how_to_please_postini
Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Yep - here's a screen capture:

0EM50000000SiMN.jpg
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Are you on a Marketo Shared IP address or a dedicated one?  If you are on a shared address then it is pretty much a guarantee that one of these in a day will be marked on one or more blacklists (RBL) - it happens ALOT.

We noticed exactly the same issue and I dug deep into this and this is what I found/know:

If your instance sends via a server which has been blacklisted (for recipient servers who respect and use this mechanism) it will send the emails it can and any emails which do are blocked are marked as Email Suspended = True.  A blacklist block is actually a softbounce but Marketo marks and sees it as a hard bounce this is owing to the fact the it is in the system as a hardbounce code "Category 1 – spam block" (Email Suspended=true (for 24 hours)).

The Email Suspended flag that I can see does not get reset after 24 hours -  and I am trying to work out if its a bug or by design (I assume the former or I am missing some data to check / know) Update: Marketo will never update this status - it is a product defect/fact of life.  The engineering required to change this status is too great.

If an IP address is listed on one day, the next campaign will send from a non-listed IP where possible. Note: the where possible - it is possible that your next server selection is actually also blacklisted and you need to wait until the selection process chooses a server which is not blacklisted.

RBL - delisting is done automatically by (some) anti –spam providers and normally completed between 24 and 48 hours. During the phase of delisting, the IP address will not be used in any mail campaign by those instances hosted on the POD that utilises the range.

The following IP addresess are, from what I can see are the worst offenders:

199.15.214.200 (em-sj-00.mktomail.com)

199.15.214.199 (em-sj-99.mktomail.com)

>> Does Marketo run tests on their shared servers to ensure companies like us aren't negatively impacted by other customers...

Not that I know of no.

As of today thsi is what I know of the IP ranges in use in San Jose and London

     

IPBlacklisted# of timesRegionRBLs
199.15.215.77Yes5NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, OSPAM, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.215.78Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.79Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.80Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.215.81Yes4NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.215.82Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.202Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.201Yes3NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.200Yes2NA (San Jose)DRMX, NoSolicitado
199.15.214.199Yes2NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.45Yes2NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL
199.15.214.46Yes4NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, ZapBL
199.15.214.47Yes4NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, ZapBL
199.15.214.48Yes1NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado
199.15.214.49Yes3NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
199.15.214.50Yes3NA (San Jose)NoSolicitado, SPAMCANNIBAL, UCEPROTECTL1
185.28.196.15Yes6EMEA (London)CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS, NoSolicitado, SORBS SPAM, UCEPROTECTL1
94.236.119.58Yes5EMEA (London)CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS, NoSolicitado, SORBS SPAM
38.188.97.188No0EMEA (London) (US based)
94.236.119.5Yes3EMEA (London)CASA CBL, CASA CBLESS, CASA CBLPLUS
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Nice post.  I don't think this piece is true, though:

During the phase of delisting, the IP address will not be used in any mail campaign by those instances hosted on the POD that utilises the range.

When recipient servers are permfailing based on a blacklist that has an aging process, Marketo doesn't disable sending from the blacklisted IP automatically, as far as I know.  Getting the timing right would be all but impossible anyway.

Ari_Echt1
Level 5

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Hi Dan,

We've had a significant drop in email open rates cut in half for exact same sender name and subject line. Been doing a lot of digging but haven't been able to pin it to anything definitive.

Just curious if you discovered anything else in your investigation?

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Ari, unfortunately, no.  We continue to have very poor email performance - even against our existing accounts. 

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Hi all,

we recently also had some issues with some email sent from IP 185.28.196.15, which is still blacklisted as we speak:
pastedImage_2.png

@ Kiersti Esparza​,

Would you have any feedback on this ? Is there any policy and/or recommendation from Marketo on this ?

-Greg

Dan_Stevens_
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Major email deliverability issues

Marketo has us on their trusted IP range of shared addresses.  When entering all five of those IP addresses, they are all blacklisted on DRMX and SPAMCANNIBAL.  Does anyone know if these two spam blockers are prevalent in B2B organizations?

pastedImage_0.png

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Major email deliverability issues

can you look at your recent hard bounced list and Email Bounced or Invalid Reason? Might also show some detail.