Marketo.com Domain (DNS) Access Issue (P1 July 25, 2017)

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Access to Marketo services was temporarily disrupted recently. Below are answers to some of the most common questions you may have.

This document has been updated as of 10:30pm PDT on 7/26/2017 to provide the most up to date information available.

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Q: Why couldn’t I access my Marketo subscription?

A: Login access goes through the affected Marketo.com domain, so users were not able to access the login page (app.marketo.com).

Q: If the domain issue has been fixed, why am I still not able to access my Marketo subscription?

A: Domain information is passed through the internet over DNS (Domain Name System) servers. There are many different DNS servers around the globe, and as domain information changes, those changes need to be passed to all of those DNS servers – what is referred to as propagation. Different servers get updated at different rates, therefore in some regions the propagation completed, while in others it is still in process.

Q: I had access to my Marketo instance, however I wasn’t able to access it again later. What is causing this?

A: DNS servers pass data across multiple channels. While the domain information is being propagated, these different channels within the DNS can each be propagated at different rates. When connecting to your Marketo instance, it uses one channel, but that isn’t always the same channel the next time. If one of these channels has fully propagated, but the other is not, then you would be able to access your Marketo instance the first time, but not the second time.

Q: If the marketo.com DNS access issue was resolved, why are we still having issues with accessing Marketo?

A: On average, most DNS servers will be updated within 24 hours but can take up to 48 hours to update. However, this is a guideline, not a rule. There are a very large number of DNS servers out there. Every ISP in the world has their own DNS server and most large companies have their own. There is unfortunately no way to know when precisely each one will be updated, or which ones failed to update.

Even after an ISP’s DNS server has propagated, you could still experience issues if your own local network has not updated. The last known version of a domain can be cached within a local system and may need to be flushed out to pull down the updated information from the DNS server. We recommend that you contact your network team or whomever manages your DNS server and request that they reset the zone record

For more information on what factors affect DNS propagation time, check out this article from GoDaddy. Marketo does not happen to use GoDaddy, however this article contains some helpful information.

Q: Was Marketo Sales Insight affected?

A: Yes. You may experience a lag in how long it takes for the Sales Insight portion of a Lead/Contact page in SFDC to load. This in turn can also cause the entire Lead/Contact page to load slowly.

Q: Was there any security risk while the domain was unregistered?

A: No. There was no possibility of any security risk or data accessibility while the domain was unregistered. The domain was restricted and locked so it could not be taken. This is part of an extra layer of security already applied to the domain.

Q: Was my branded domain affected? (The answer to this question has been updated)

A: Upon closer investigation, this could have been affected:

• Branded domain refers to the ability to show your hyperlinks as coming from your own company as opposed to coming from Marketo. The settings of your branding domain itself have not been touched and the branding domain itself is still configured the same way.
• Hyperlinks using a branded domain were affected. It was originally reported that they would not be, however upon closer investigation, we’ve found that those hyperlinks do still pass through part of Marketo’s domain. Therefore, some customers with branded domains did have links that could not connect properly.

Q: How were my campaigns affected?

A: All batch campaigns continued to run as expected. Any Trigger campaign listening for embedded form fill outs were not triggered given these domains were inaccessible and forms could not be filled out. All other Trigger campaigns continued to run as expected.

Q: Were my emails delivered?

A: Marketo uses dedicated domains for each customer which are not linked to the affected domain. Email delivery and tracking was not affected.

Q: Were images and hyperlinks affected? (The answer to this question has been updated)

A: Yes. Images and hyperlinks for non-branded domains would not resolve (time-out). Hyperlinks and images for branded domains intermittently did not render depending on many different variables.

Q: Were landing pages affected?

A: Landing pages should not have been affected. We are currently investigating this to completely verify.

Q: Were forms affected?

A: Some forms were affected. Forms that are embedded on your own site were affected.

Q: If affected, can that form data be recovered?

A: Since the form was not accessible, no data was input, and therefore no data is lost.  We recognize that we were not able to capture form fill out data and we truly apologize for this inconvenience.

Q: Were any API calls affected?

A: There have been some reports of API calls giving errors, however it is not yet confirmed whether this is directly related or not. If you have received errors, please Contact Marketo Support  and supply the full API call and Response in the case created.

Q: Was any data lost during this time? (The answer to this question has been updated)

A:  No data loss occurred. All backend processing was working as expected. However, if leads took an action that could not be registered by Marketo, then the activity data from that wouldn’t be logged. This will affect reporting.

For example: Marketo uses a single clear tracking pixel to register email opens. When that image file is served by the Marketo server, it registers it as an open activity. If that image for the single tracking pixel does not resolve because it could not connect to the domain, then the open activity could not be registered. The same would be true of clicks on tracked hyperlinks. If the link does not connect to the domain, then the link click activity cannot be logged.

Q: Was there any impact on reporting?

A: Yes. As described above, if leads had activity that could not be completed such as clicking on a hyperlink that did not connect, then those activities could not be logged, and therefore would not be shown in your reports.

Q: Was this issue resolved?

The issue preventing Marketo.com domain access was largely resolved as of Noon PDT on July 25.   However, DNS propagation can take longer in some locations, based on network setup.  We assure you that the application continued to operate in background and your data was never at risk.