Marketo emails showing up as BULK - with no ability to show images

[Dan_Stevens_]

We've identified yet another client of ours who filter all Marketo emails as follows:

• When the email is sent, the words [BULK] are appended to the subject line
• Images are blocked
• When the user clicks the "click here" link to unblock all features (like images), the images remain broken/non-viewable.

Other than asking the client to whitelist our IP range (which hasn't worked with prior clients who have done this for us), is there anything we can do?  We already have our SPF/DKIM setup properly, use branded tracking links, and send from our company's domain.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Dan,

Is this a large or small company?

In other terms, is this a feature of their in-house emailing servers or something provided by a ISP of any kind?

-Greg

[Dan_Stevens_]

Hi Greg - It's a very large, global company.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Can anyone from Marketo's email deliverability team weigh in on this?

Kiersti Esparza

[Kiersti_Esparz1]

Dan,

Please reach out through Support on this issue to have this looked at by the Deliverability Team.  There are a lot of reasons for bulk folder delivery that we would need to look into.

Delivery to the bulk folder is often driven by the reputation of the individual sender.  Our team would start with high level questions about how the sender is acquiring their leads and how are they maintaining their database. 

• Do they purchase email addresses? (Best Practices for Purchased Data)
• Do they remove inactive email addresses? (How to Manage Your Marketo Database for Deliverability)
• Have they recently triggered any blacklistings through Marketo?  (Blacklist Remediation)
• We may also look into the content and see if there are any issue with the content that could be causing an issue.

-Kiersti

[SanfordWhiteman]

From the screenshot, it looks like an intermediate server/service is changing the image src. I say this because OWA does not appear to be aware that clicking to enable images will have no effect. If you could get on a machine where this is happening it would be easy to see where those URLs are being rewritten to, and presumably figure out which software is making the change.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I started to look at the source and noticed in the email header that DKIM is signed by mktosender.com.  Shouldn't this be our domain?

[Kiersti_Esparz1]

You may see two DKIM signatures.  One is your domain and the other is a Marketo domain.

If you don't see your domain also in a DKIM signature it may not be set up in the Marketo Admin console. 

That particular signature indicates that you are sending from a subset of Marketo's IPs reserved for low volume, highly-vetted customers.  I would definitely want to dig into these issues more keeping from a deliverability perspective. 

[Dan_Stevens_]

Kiersti, see the screenshot above - those are the only DKIM signatures found in our header.  And yes, we have this configured in the Admin console:

I just submitted a ticket with Support and asked them to have the Deliverability team take a look at this.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I received the following response from Support:

What the Deliverability team told me is that we are dual-signing DKIM now. Meaning that in the chance that the customer has not set up DKIM, we're signing for them anyway. Dual-signing is fine and it doesn't affect deliverability at all.

What I don't get is that we have indeed setup our DKIM - and even if this is dual-signed (and we have setup DKIM properly) - why is our domain not listed in the DKIM signature within the header?

Sanford Whiteman​, does this sound right?