Need more detailed information about email bounces

[Kimi_Heskett1]

Lots of good info in this thead, thanks all!

[Anonymous]

Elliott, I have your support ticket now, I'll be writing you back shortly!

[Michelle_Tizian]

Thanks for posting this information Elliott.  I  struggle with the bounces all the time. So what do you guys do on your end when you get the different categories of bounces? 

[Anonymous]

We have done batch submits of our email addresses to StrikeIron to validate the Invalid Email status, which helps keeps these to a minimum, but I hope to implement a real-time validity check with StrikeIron when someone submits a form.

Of course people still leave their company, etc., so we periodically if we have lead records that  have the Email Invalid field set to true and that lead has had no activity in the last 6 months, we change the revenue stage from "Inactive" to "Bogus Info".

If we get repeated hard bounces due to spam blocks (e.g. Email Suspended for 24 hours), I check to see if the IP address for our shared Marketo email server is blacklisted (it rarely is).  If it's a customer, we have our customer success rep contact them by Outlook email (sometimes these go through when Marketo sent emails don't) or by phone and we ask them to white list our email address / domain and email server IP, so that they will get our emails.

[Anonymous]

Hi Elliot,

RE: I check to see if the IP address for our shared Marketo email server is blacklisted (it rarely is).

How would I validate if my IP address is blacklisted or not?

Thank you in advance, Lana

[Michelle_Tizian]

Elliott,

Are you lone person who does everything you mentioned above in terms of tracking spam blocks and invalids? What about tracking spam complaints?  How often do you do list hygiene? Is it weekly, monthly or daily?

I created a web page on our site for white listing instructions because some people find it easier to send a short email with the whitelist instruction link on it. Just like you we send from our company email server.  But there are some instances where even that is being blocked. So I have someone else in the company reach out to them. 

Are you doing any certification?  I was thinking of doing the one from Returnpath.

[Edward_Masson]

I worked with support some time ago and got some tips on Email Bounce Category.
 
The Marketo Mail servers use "Strongmail" as the mailing software and Strongmail stamps email with 1 of 6 different bounce categories. You can create Smart Lists for each of the 6 categories (1,2,3,4,7,9) set them to look at the last 7 days and show the leads.
 

• Category 1 – Should be Email Suspended (usually from spamblock). You may find leads (particularly Gmail addresses) that are Category 1 bounces, but have no data in Email Suspended or Email Suspended at. They are STILL problematic leads. You could also add a further constraint for the # of times they hit Category 1.

• Category 2 – Email Invalid. Anyone who has a Category 2 bounce should be email invalid. Leads in this category should be considered for being marked email invalid if they are not already.

• Category 3 – Soft Bounce. “Mailbox is full”, that kind of thing. Temporary. Repeat offenders may be an issue.

• Category 4 – Technical. Something was wrong with the mailserver on the other end. Again, temporary, but you might want to look for minimum # of times.

• Category 7 – Proprietary, used for Strongmail internally.

• Category 9 – Unknown. Nonsensical errors, non English, etc.

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Wow!  There's a lot to digest here, but it's so much more valuable than the standard community article that talks about soft and hard bounces.  Thanks for all of the work that everyone has put into these responses, they were invaluable in helping me make recommendations regarding our email policy amongst the 3 systems that we're currently using.

[Delinda_Tinkey1]

This is great information! I hope Marketo finds this thread and updates the documentation. Many people could benefit.

[Anonymous]

Delinda Tinkey​

We are on it

- Scott : )