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Included in this article Overview Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Hard Bounces Soft Bounces Bounce Details Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields 2. Create a Program to house everything 3. Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details Overview Bounce activities carry details for why the email was bounced, but it’s housed within the activity log entry, not in a field on the lead record, so it’s difficult to export that data. This article will show you how to extract that information to create a directory of leads bouncing emails and how to make the list automatically update. This will also create counters for bounces and successful re-deliveries after bounces happen. Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Email bounces come in different types depending on why the email was bounced; Hard Bounces or Soft Bounces. Hard Bounces Hard Bounces come in two types, Category 1 and Category 2. Category 1 bounces are emails that have been marked as spam by the recipient mail server. Many email servers monitor blacklists or spam traps, so after de-listing with them, leads that have had a Category 1 bounce previously may be able to receive emails again. Category 2 bounces occur due to an email address that is invalid or doesn’t exist. Soft Bounces Soft Bounces come in three different types, Categories 3, 4 or 9. Category 3 bounces are usually temporary, caused by full mailboxes, timeouts, or throttling. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 4 bounces are caused by technical problems, Transient Failures, Admin Failures, DNS Failures. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 9 bounces are unknown, undetermined or gibberish details. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Bounce Details When an email is bounced, the recipient mail server includes details of why it was bounced. These are created by the admin of the recipient mail server and vary greatly, but most will give some explanation that can give valuable information. Email Bounce Codes Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields You’ll need 6 custom fields, two DateTime fields, two Score fields, and two String fields Name the DateTime fields “Bounce Date” and “Email Delivered After Bounce”. Name the Score fields “Email Bounces” and “Deliveries After Bounces” Name the String fields “Email Bounce Details” and “Email Bounce Category” Directions for creating Custom Fields can be found here: Create a Custom Field in Marketo 2. Create a Program to house everything Use a default program type and name it "Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails". Info on creating programs can be found here: Create a Program 3. Create a Static List This static list will be your actual directory that contains all of the leads that are currently bouncing emails. Name it "Active Bounce List". Info on creating a static list can be found here: Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns These two Smart Campaigns are what will be used to add and remove leads from your active bounce list. Info on creating Smart Campaigns can be found here: Create a New Smart Campaign Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Your first Smart Campaign will be used to listen for any email bounces that occur. The campaign will populate the “Bounce Date”, “Email Bounce Category” and “Email Bounce Details” fields. It will then add one point to the “Email Bounces” score field which can be used to count how many bounces have occurred per lead. Lastly, the campaign will add the lead to the static list which will be an active directory of leads who are bouncing emails. Campaign Smart List Use the two triggers of “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft” in the Smart List. Set both triggers to “is any” so that they will fire whenever any email bounces for any reason. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 5 flow steps. The flow will use a System Token and some Trigger Tokens, which can be used to pull details out of the action that activated the trigger. In this case, the Trigger Tokens will be pulling out the details on why the emails were bounced. That info is in the bounce message and is logged in the lead's activity log. Normally you'd have to comb through the activity log one at a time to find these details for each individual lead. This method, however, will pull the details out automatically for all leads. Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Bounce Date” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Data Value. Attribute: “Email Bounce Category” New Value: {{trigger.category}} Flow Step 3: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Bounce Details” New Value: {{trigger.details}} Flow Step 4: Change Score Score Name: “Email Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 5: Add to List List Name: “Active Bounce List” Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries Campaign Smart List The Smart List of the campaign will need a trigger for “Email is Delivered” set to “is any” and also a filter of “Member of List” looking just for leads that belong to your Static List. This way, the campaign will only apply to leads who have had an email bounce but have then had an email successfully delivered afterwards. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 3 flow steps to do the following; log when the email was delivered, add a point to the "Deliveries After Bounce" Score Field, and remove the lead from the "Active Bounce List". Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Delivered After Bounce” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Score Score Name: “Deliveries After Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 3: Remove from List List Name: Operational.Active Bounce List 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details The custom fields you’ve created for email bounce information won’t show automatically in the view of your list. You can create a new view of the list to show just this information so that when it is exported it will give you only the email bounce information you need. Once the list has the necessary details, it can be exported with those columns included so that you can work with it. You can identify emerging trends and issues with your deliverability by looking for common themes among the bounce details. Directions for creating Custom Views can be found here

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(Article Updated - August 2024) Overview A blocklist is a database of IP addresses or domains that have been associated with the sending of unsolicited commercial email or spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and business email networks use information from blocklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop to inbox delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blocklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blocklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When an impactful listing occurs, we reach out to the blocklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blocklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blocklists, most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below, we have compiled a list of the blocklists that commonly appear across our sender ecosystem. Each blocklist has been grouped into a top tier (Tier I) by most impactful, to the bottom least impactful tier (Tier III). These may have little to no impact across our sender network. Tier I Blocklist Spamhaus (SBL) Impact: Spamhaus is the only blocklist that we categorize as a Tier I for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery. It is the most well-respected and widely used blocklist in the world. A listing at Spamhaus will have a negative effect on your ability to deliver emails to your customer’s inbox and can cause bounce rates of over 50%. Evidence suggests that most of the top North American ISPs use Spamhaus to inform blocking decisions. How it works: Unlike many blocklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and base listings on a number of variables. Most commonly senders are listed for mailing to spam trap addresses that Spamhaus owns. Sometimes Spamhaus will list senders based on recipient feedback as well. Next Steps: Please note that every Spamhaus email can be quite different depending on the information provided and the nature of the listing . Because Spamhaus has multiple types of listings, the remediation steps are based on which type of blocklisting has occurred. We have listed the most common types to affect Marketo customers, from most to least impactful. Impact can range from a full block of top severity, to a partial block that is less severe (CSS Data, DBL). If remediation isn’t performed and the problem not addressed, these listings can increase in severity and turn into a full blocklisting. Spamhaus Blocklistings Types SBL (full blocklisting) Considered the most impactful. Remediation steps: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. Once alerted to the listing, we send an email notifying the customer, and reach out to the Spamhaus contact to start the remediation process. Only a Marketo delivery team member should be in direct correspondence with the Spamhaus contact, to speak on behalf of the customer, and to relay their questions and instructions, ensuring quick resolution and reduced impact. Senders that trigger this listing on a shared IP range will be moved to a more isolated, penalty range (IPB), so as not to impact the other shared senders. Those affected on a Dedicated IP, only impact their own sending and will not be moved. However, depending on the severity of the issue, our team may need to revoke a customer’s ability to send any emails until full resolution. The listing will last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. SBL CSS Customers are alerted of the listing with an email containing all the information needed to immediately begin the remediation process. This is part of an automated trigger listing, that allows for a customer to delist directly on the Spamhaus website, after they’ve completed remediation. Remediation steps: Customers will go to the Spamhaus IP lookup website, at https://check.spamhaus.org, where they can check on the status of their IP and continue to monitor it in real time, until it is no longer listed there. Follow the remediation and delisting instructions provided, and check for specific details in the blocklist notification email. DBL (Domain blocklisting) Customers will receive an email notification alerting of the company domain being listed. The email will contain specific information to help narrow down and identify which email source likely triggered it within Marketo. It’s important to note that any email sent from outside of Marketo, that contained the company domain, is suspect. This means, if the sender uses multiple IPs and/multiple email platforms, then any of those could be the source. Remediation steps: Follow the detailed instructions in the email, which will also provide a link to the Spamhaus Domain reputation checker webpage, to check the real time listing status of the affected domain. Once the email source is identified and cause addressed, this customer will follow the online instructions to request to be delisted. Tier II Blocklist SpamCop Impact: SpamCop is not used by any of the major North American ISPs to inform blocking decisions, but it makes it to the Tier II list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. SpamCop is considered a Tier I one blocklist for B2B marketers but a Tier II for B2C marketers. SpamCop is a dynamic IP blocklist, that can affect a single IP or a subset of IPs Typically, the block will automatically lift within one business day, but can take longer for relisted IPs. To have triggered a SpamCop listing likely means the sender has a list management problem that should be addressed. How it works: SpamCop lists IPs for one of two reasons: Either the email hit SpamCop spam trap addresses OR A SpamCop user has reported the email unwanted. Most of SpamCop’s spam traps are previously valid addresses that have not been active for 12 months or longer. Remediation steps: If you are seeing a significant number of bouncing emails caused by a SpamCop blocked IP but aren’t sure if your email activity triggered the listing, first identify whether you are sending on a shared sender network or not. If sending from a shared IP range when this occurs, you or any other customer sending from the same network may have contributed to the IP block. This IP block will automatically get dropped within a business day. For those on a Dedicated IP that trigger a listing, refer to the above remediation steps and resources, to address the list management issue. Tier III Blocklist (Low/ No impact ) These are considered the lowest tier and therefore cause the least impact across the Marketo sender ecosystem. Some of these blocklists were more impactful at one time, while others are only impactful based on the sender region (Manitu). Others still can suddenly flare up (Lashback). There are also many blocklists that are ignored (0spam), and are not taken seriously because they do not provide any means to delist once on the list (NoSolicitado) or that they charge money to have the listing removed ( UCEPROTECT ). The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry. When using blocklist tool checkers, such as MXToolBox, many blocklists will appear, but very few are relevant. Here is our selection of Blocklists you may come across that are least impactful: Project Honey Pot SpamAssassin URIBL/SURBL DrMX PSBL 0spam HostKarma Ascams ZapBL Barracuda Trendmicro Inc. Cloudmark Proofpoint Invaluement ISP Blocklists Some ISPs use internal blocklists to make blocking decisions. Examples include AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail. If your IP is being blocked by one of these networks, and those networks have a large presence in your lists, a block of this kind could have a noticeable negative impact on delivery. Marketo monitors for significant ISP blocks. Those experiencing deliverability issues with emails not making it to the Inbox and bulking in the spam folder may benefit from additional services with our Email Delivery Consultants. Remediation Steps: Email Delivery Compliance Team works to resolve any ISP blocks. ISP blocks are are usually resolved or lifted within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Customers experiencing significant blocks for Microsoft domains (outlook.com, live.com, microsoft.com), can submit a request to the delivery team to seek mitigation on their behalf. Additional Resources: Blocklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blocklist remediation Blocklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blocklist?

Issue Even though the report and Smart List may be looking at exactly the same thing (e.g. an email sent to a specific group on a specific day), many times the numbers in the report do not match the results of the Smart List. Solution Reports in Marketo like the Email Performance Report are returning results of activities that occurred in your instance, while Smart Lists return results of currently existing person records. When a person is deleted or merged, the activities associated with the person do not get pruned or purged. So a Smart List that looks for opened email will return all the currently existing records who have that open activity but will not return results of deleted or merged records. Conversely, a report looking at the same thing will return all activities, even if the records no longer exist.

Issue When there is a change to a field in your CRM that is mapped to a Marketo score type field, the next time the sync processes the change will be reverted and there will be a "Sync Person Updates" activity logged showing that the original value got pushed back from Marketo to the CRM. Solution Score type fields are designed to be managed solely by Marketo, since that is a unique field type to our system. Scoring is intended to be handled by the scoring campaigns that you set up in Marketo, and pushed to the CRM if necessary. If you have a score field that you intend to put processes in place where your CRM will be updating the values, simply make sure that the Marketo field that it is mapped to is an Integer type field.

Issue The subject line for an email sent out to leads did not match what was set for an approved email. Solution The email may have Dynamic Subject Lines enabled. Dynamic Subject Lines allow you to set dynamic content for the subject line based on the Segmentation of your leads. Visit our Documentation for further information about segments and dynamic content. Segments: Create a segmentation Dynamic Content: Using Dynamic Content in an email The issue can be resolved by converting the subject line to a Static Subject Line. A Static Subject Line is a single line of content that will send out to any recipient of your email, regardless of their segmentation. You can do so by doing the following: Click on the Subject Line to bring up the Subject Line edit buttons. Click the Make Static button

Issue When trying to edit an email you are receiving the error "Cannot Load Email" with out any other details. This is only when trying to edit the email, other functionalities like cloning still work. Solution The reason you are receiving this error message is because the HTML of the email has been corrupted. Extract the HTML of the email by following the instructions here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Download+an+Email's+HTML Find the email and select it In the Email Actions Drop down click Download HTML Once the emails HTML is extracted you can check on the errors by pushing the HTML through a validator (https://validator.w3.org/) **If no Errors are evident please create a support ticket. If there are errors but you would still like to use the HTML in an email. Create a new email, replace the HTML with the extracted content from the old email Append the HTML to resolve any errors that would corrupt the content Save and Approve Email for use in campaigns and programs Root Cause Sometimes emails can become corrupted in Marketo. When this occurs unexpected behavior may occur. Typically emails become corrupted when a copy of a copy of a copy (etc.) occurs. With each clone of an asset there is a small chance that the asset could become corrupted, this becomes more and more likely as clones of clones are made. A solution to help prevent corruption would be to create a 'master' email that you can clone from each time instead of cloning from something else that was cloned. This same solution can be applied to other assets such as landing pages.

Issue When you click on ‘Forward to Friend’ link on an email template, it redirects you to the below 404 error page. Solution The ‘Forward to Friend’ link will work only in a sent email and not on an email template. To test this functionality, you need to create an email using the template which contains "Forward to Friend’ link and then send the email to your test lead using a run action. It will not work properly with a send sample. Open the email and click on the "Forward to Friend" link. Once clicked the email will open on a webpage and then the below "Forward to Friend" box will be visible. This is a article attached imageThis is a article attached imageThis is a article attached image To know more about "Forward to Friend", refer the below document. http://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/%27Forward+to+a+Friend+Link%27+in+Emails

Issue Syncing a SFDC custom field that is not on the Lead, Contact, or Account object. Solution Any custom field created in Salesforce that is not linked with Lead, Contact or Account objects will not sync to Marketo. Only the Lead, Contact and Account objects can be synced down to Marketo by default. If you would like to have any custom field synced to Marketo, it must be associated to a Lead, Contact or Account object in Salesforce. Custom Objects created in your Salesforce instance can be part of Marketo too. To use a custom object in Marketo, it must be associated to a Lead, Contact or Account object in Salesforce as well. For more information on syncing Salesforce Custom Objects, please see the documentation here: SFDC Sync: Custom Object Sync. Fields on the SFDC Custom Object do not become fields in the Marketo lead database, but can be used as filter constraints on Custom Object filters - Add/Remove Custom Object Field as Smart List/Trigger Constraints.

Issue When you try to drag and drop elements (form, rectangle, etc) into a free-form landing page, nothing happens. Solution If the free-form template is not mobile compatible, you may experience this issue. Please make the template mobile compatible to fix it. Refer this article to make the existing free-form template mobile compatible: Link - https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Make+an+Existing+Free-form+Landing+Page+Template+Mobile+Compatible

Issue Can a Default program in a nurture stream be changed to the Nurture Channel for reporting purposes? Solution Program Channels can only be applied to one type of Program. Nurture Channel will only be usable on a Engagement type program. You can however have multiple channels avaliable for a specific type of program! So you can have one program type with multiple channel options, but you cannot have one channel used for multiple program types.

Issue Email Program Audience count is different than delivered/bounced email count. Solution The Audience number doesn't refresh or update once the Smart List is created, so the number of qualified people can change between then and sending the email. That is normal. If you want to double check the people, you can click the refresh button on the Audience pane of the email program just before sending, or create a separate Smart List with the same filters just before you send the email. Also be aware that the Audience may include duplicate leads, or leads that have reached their communication limit. These leads will not show as blocked, but will not be sent the email

Issue After running an A/B test, some records appear to have received both Test and Winner. Solution In an A/B test, the sample size of the audience is sent the variants, and then for the winner: the entire audience minus the test audience is sent the Winning email. So let's say that you received both Test and Winner. This means you have duplicate records in the database. Marketo is designed to not send duplicate leads the same email at the same time. So one of the duplicates is qualified for the Test, and then when the Winner is sent, it's the total audience minus the test audience, the Winner is sent to the duplicate record. This above situation can apply to Lead Records as well, because of duplicates with the same email address, but also duplicate records that may have a FWD set up between them (record B emails FWD to Record A email address). To reduce the chances of this happening, you may wish to run a de-duplication pass on your database.

Issue You are utilizing Forms on Marketo Landing Pages, and want to run reporting on these forms. Solution Currently Marketo has reporting for Email assets and Landing Pages. We do not have the ability to report on Forms specifically. One option would be to use Web Page reporting - this reported information would be limited to Marketo Pages with numbers of records who filled out the form, listed under "conversions." You could then create a Smart List to identify leads who have filled out these forms.

Issue A Change Data Value activity gets recorded on a person record but the Updated At field for the record doesn't get changed to reflect it. Solution The "Updated At" field in Marketo is a system managed field that gets refreshed any time that there is a data value change to a person field, but not when the field is on the company object instead. To confirm what object the field in question is on, search for it in Field Management and check what folder it is located in. The folder Info (or Lead Info) contains person fields while company fields are contained within the Company Info folder.

Issue You want to customize the error message shown if a form field is left blank or the wrong type of data is entered. Solution Open the form in Design Studio and select the field you want to update the validation message for. Select "Validation Message" on the right hand side of the screen. In the dropdown menu, select "Custom instead of the default "Standard" and enter your custom error message.

Issue A lead was not sent an email by a Smart Campaign even though they should have qualified for the Smart List. Solution * Check if the lead has reached the daily or weekly communication limit. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Enable+Communication+Limits https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Apply+Communication+Limits+to+Smart+Campaign * Check if the lead has a duplicate lead with the same email address that was sent an email already. * Check if the campaign is set to qualify leads only once. If the lead has ran through the campaign previously when it had different flow steps, then the lead cannot qualify for the campaign again even though the flow steps have changed. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Edit+Qualification+Rules+in+a+Smart+Campaign * If all leads in the campaign were not processed, check if there is a campaign restriction. https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Enable+Person+Restrictions+for+Smart+Campaigns

Issue You see a soft bounce on a lead and in the details you see it show System send failure: Reply-To address parse error (value of the address) Solution Confirm the tokens you are using are for the proper field and that the value for the field is an email address. The parse error occurs when we cannot generate or create a proper email address in the From Email or the Reply To Email fields. The error will show in the parenthesis the value we tried to put in.. For example Service Department is in the parenthesis, this would be an example of a incorrect field being used.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Smart List Results Do Not Match Email Performance Report Numbers

Changes to Score Type Fields Made in the CRM Get Reverted by Marketo

How to Filter for Device and Platform Information in "Opened Email" Smart List

Subject Line for Sent Emails Different than What Was Approved

"Cannot Load Email" Error When Editing an Email

Forward to Friend Link on Emails Template Redirecting to Page 404 Error

Syncing Custom Field Created in Salesforce Standard and Custom Objects

Unable to Drag or Drop Elements into Freeform Landing Page

Can a Default Program Be Changed to a Nurture Campaign Channel?

Email Program Audience Is Different than Delivered Emails

Boolean Tokens in Create Task and Change Data Value Cause Flow Step to be Skipped

Lead Partitions and Workspaces in RCE

Link Performance Report for Specific Campaign/Program Emails

Received Both Emails in the A/B Test: Test and Winner

Forms Reporting

“Updated At” System Field Not Updating

Customizing the Error Message (Validation Message) on a Form

Smart Campaign Did Not Send an Email to a Lead

Webhook Calls and API Limit

Soft Bounce “System Send Failure Reply-To Address Parse Error”