valid email is hard bounced

[Anonymous]

I have a handful of email addresses I know are valid but were flagged as hard bounced on a recent email. Why would this happen and how do I make sure these addresses are still included in future communications?

[Josh_Hill13]

You can also look at leads that have this issue and run the flow step Change Data Value Email Invalid=FALSE if you believe the lead should be reactivated.

Marketo will Email Suspend the leads for 24 hours in most cases like this.

[Grant_Booth · Accepted solution]

Hi Kristi,

Marketo automatically marks a lead as "Email Invalid" when we receive a Category 2 hard bounce from their email server. It's possible that the email server is improperly configured, and is sending a Category 2 hard bounce when it should not. If you double click on the bounce activity in the lead's activity log, does it say "2" for the Category field in the popup? If not, and the address is getting marked as invalid, you should submit a support case. If it does, but you're certain the email address is valid, I recommend contacting the lead (via phone, I guess) to let them know you're receiving an incorrect bounce code when you try to email to them.

[Anonymous]

So the only way to change the invalid email setting that Marketo automatically does when it's hard bounced is to manually go into each lead that was bounced and change it?

[Valerie_Armstro]

Hi Kristi,

Sometimes, hard bounces show up as  "false-positives" due to spam filters.

More info here on soft vs. hard bounces: https://community.marketo.com/MarketoArticle?id=kA050000000KzZyCAK