Marketo Says Email Delivered, Client say they never received it.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

My company uses Marketo for many of our operational update emails to our clients.  I have a few clients complaining that they never received the emails (multiple ones over the course of 2 weeks or so, including a test email).  When I look at the activity log of the 2 email addresses for the client, Marketo says the emails were sent and delivered.  The clients say the email is not in the Spam folder, and there firewall hasn't blocked anything.  Any idea as to why they have are not receiving the updates?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

There are several reasons this could happen I can think of off the top of my head.  Delivered means it was accepted by the intended recipients mail server.  It could still have gone to their junk folder, have them check there.  It could also be quarantined within the server, which would be an issue on their end and not with Marketo.  Have them whitelist your ip's and sending domain on their end and it shouldn't be an issue.  Bottom line, delivered status can be a pretty broad and ambiguous status.  Really it just means the email you sent was not rejected.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hey Nick: 
This happens to us as well, I think I am a pro now.  🙂  From what I have gathered, the delivered activity is logged when the receiveing server tells the sending server, "thank you for sending the email, we will take it from here"  From there it is hard to tell what happens with the email.  Sounds like the antispam filter is routing the message to a network spam folder or quarantine folder.  You can also receive false opens as well.  Open acitivity is logged when a small image that marketo embeds into your emsils is downloaded when the end user opens the mail.  if the activity log is recording a delivered and open, but the user is not receivng an email, the anti-spam sofware is scanning the email causing the open activity.

Either way, have them reach out to their IT team to whitelist your server IP's.  here is a link to the community article:  http://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000KypECAS

[Anonymous]

What she said... 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for the responses.  They have already whitelisted our servers and still nothing.  I will tell them the issue is probably on their end.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Nick,

Everything everyone said above is correct which is why "deliverability" rates are actually much lower than most people expect.  I will say that Postini is one of the biggest culprits on the email landscape.  I've had issues with Postini -- even after the server is whitelisted.  

Good luck!

Patty