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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 When viewing the activity history for email sends to a lead, the campaign name does not reflect the program name responsible for the send. Solution Marketo will run background campaigns to handle emails sent through a either an email program or a nurture program. The naming convention for this may look like the following: Program - #### - Exploration - Campaign Program - #### - Exploitation - Campaign Email Batch Program - #### - send-email-campaign To refer to the accurate name of the program responsible for the send, this information can be found in the Detail section of the activity log.

Issue Sometimes you may get this error when trying to sync a Marketo Program to an SFDC Campaign - "Not allowed: Salesforce campaign contains incompatible statuses", even though the statuses match in the Marketo program and SFDC campaign. Solution Check for the statuses in the Marketo program channel and SFDC campaign - you will see the same statuses. This error occurs if there is any case-sensitive error in the statuses. For example, if your Marketo program has the following statuses: Attended, Registered, Unable to Attend and the SFDC campaign has Attended, Registered, Unable to attend. Then you will encounter the above error. You have to change the status in Marketo as "Unable to attend" or change the status in SFDC Campaign as "Unable to Attend" in order to fix this.

Issue How do Revenue Cycle Explorer filters operate? Solution RCE Filters operate in the following ways: Select from a List (Includes, Excludes) -- This filter type within RCE will let you include or exclude preset values Match a specific string (Contains, Does not Contain) -- This filter type will let you enter a free form value such as Contains "We" to find statuses which may have Web in them. The not-contains would filter anyone who did not have "We" in the status. On either filter you can select Multiple Values. Within the Match a Specific String function click on [+] and add another value option and this will then add additional string areas to use. A example would be Status contains: Reg Regis Registered Registered - Web etc.. As you can see you can match to one of many values!

Issue The Smart Campaign has a last modified date of x, however, it does not have any details of any change on date x in the Audit Trail. Solution The Smart Campaign's last modified date was updated by a campaign change that is currently not recorded in Audit Trail (e.g. campaign was aborted). https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Change+Details+in+Audit+Trail#ChangeDetailsinAuditTrail-AssetAuditTrail Please contact Marketo Support if you need further assistance in tracking down changes made to a Smart Campaign

Issue By default, new Marketo person records will not automatically sync to Salesforce to create new Lead records. There are other actions required to get these new records into Salesforce. Solution In order for new Marketo person records to sync over to create new Salesforce Lead records, they will need to be run through a Sync Person to SFDC flow step or be given a member status in a Program that is synced to a Salesforce Campagin. Sync Person to SFDC flow action: You can sync a new Marketo person record to Salesforce using this flow action as either a single step flow action or as a flow step in a smart campaign. Single-Step Flow Action: In Lead Database, select the Marketo person records you want to sync, click Person Actions > Salesforce > Sync Person to SFDC Flow Step: Creating a smart campaign that utilizes the Sync Person to SFDC flow step will sync the Marketo person record to Salesforce. Note: Other SFDC flow steps, such as Change Lead Owner, or Change SFDC Campaign status, will also sync the record to Salesforce, since the record must be in Saleforce in order for these steps to execute. Program Member Status Sync: Giving a new Marketo person record a member status in a Program that is synced to a Salesforce Campaign will sync that new person record to Salesforce during the next scheduled Salesforce sync.

Issue You click on a link in a sample email to test form pre-fill, but when you do, the form is not pre-filled. Solution When sending sample emails, the send sample feature does not generate links which are captured by the web browser, so the form pre-fill information is not passed. The test needs to be performed by sending an email using one the features below: Single Flow Action "Send Email" in a Smart List A Smart Campaign An Email Program Once a live email has been sent and not a sample email, the tracked link which contains the mkt_tok passes the lead info and the form will now pre-fill with that lead's information until the cookies are cleared, a new browser is used or an incognito browser is used.

Issue In the activity log, you see that a lead has been added to a Marketo Custom Object, but in the Custom Object tab there is no data. Solution The reason why that it appears as the custom object data is missing for a lead is because the custom object data becomes disassociated to the lead and associated to another lead when the custom object data is pushed into Marketo. When the custom object data is pushed to Marketo intended for lead A with the same dedupe field value of an existing custom object record associated to lead B, it disassociates it from the lead B and associates it with lead A. Therefore, when looking at lead B that has had an 'Add to Custom Object' activity, but does not have the Custom Object data visible in the Custom Objects tab, it is because the custom object data was associated to another lead. For example: On Lead A, custom object data is added on x time with the dedupe field value 'test' --> custom object data is associated to this lead and is visible in the Custom Object tab On Lead B, custom object data is added on y time with the same dedupe field value 'test' --> existing custom object data that was created in previous step is now associated to this lead, becomes visible in the Custom Object tab Since the custom object data is moved to this lead, it is no longer visible in the custom object tab for Lead A.

Issue New user gets message that the password link is expired when attempting to login for the first time. Solution If the invite isn't accepted within 24hrs of the first invite email being sent, it expires and there is no way to re-send it. You will need to delete the user and create a new one with the same email address. After you delete a user, it take a few minutes to clear out of the backend, so if you get a message that the user is already in use, just wait a few minutes and try again.

Issue The Get Lead Activities REST API is not returning any activities even though the lead referenced definitely has multiple activities of the type being called. REQUEST: https://[munchkinID].mktorest.com/rest/v1/activities.json?access_token=x&leadIds=123&nextPageToken=ABC&activityTypeIds=46 RESPONSE: { "requestId": "xyz123", "success": true, "nextPageToken": "ABC", "moreResult": true } Solution The Get Lead Activity REST API are reliant on timestamps for their nextPageToken. Each Get Lead Activity call will go through 300 activities of ALL types from the timestamp placed on the nextPageToken. This is supported by the article http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#/Activities/getLeadActivitiesUsingGET "By default, the endpoints mentioned in this section will return 300 activity items at a time. If the moreResult attribute is true, this means that more results are available. Continue to call the endpoint until the moreResult attribute returns false, which means that there are no more results available." Based on that, the reason why the API call does not return any activities is that it does not find any activities of type 46 in the 300 activities it checks from the timestamp placed on the nextPageToken So when making a Get Lead Activity call for a specific activity type, ensure that nextPageToken is as close as to the timestamp of the specific activities

Issue When sending an email from Sales Insight it looks as though it has been sent as expected, but the person to whom the email was addressed never received the message, nor can it be found via the Was Sent Sales Email filter in a Smart Campaign. Solution Sales Insight for SFDC will not send to people who have a status of Email Invalid, Marketing Suspended or are Unsubscribed. Please validate that the person you are trying to send to does not have these statuses. As well, Sales Insight emails can be sent to groups up to 200 people. Any more and your send will not process. If the person's statuses are as expected and the group was less than 200 people, please contact Marketo Support to troubleshoot further. Note: The Sales Insight plugins for Outlook and Gmail will send emails to leads regardless of Unsubscribed, Email Invalid, or Marketing Suspended status.

Issue Acquisition Program is not being assigned when a new lead is created by filling out a form associated with a program. Environment Form embedded in a non-Marketo web page Solution In order for a program to be assigned as the acquisition program, the form and landing page both have to be child assets of the program. If the form is embedded on an external page, Marketo has no way to associate the form fill out with that specific program. You can either use a trigger campaign that looks for the form fill out and assigns the Acquisition Program through a Data Value Change flow step, or put the form on a Marketo landing page within the program.

Issue A recent email send resulted in a number of leads specifically blocked by Communication Limits, as seen within the Results or Lead Activity Log. What are the re-sending options? Solution The Marketo Application does not offer any automatic re-sending/rescheduling functions within the campaign. If communication limits are low, and records are blocked from being sent emails, you may need to adjust the limits or set the necessary programs or campaigns to ignore communication limits. Enable/Disable Communication Limits in an Email Program Apply Communication Limits to Smart Campaign - you would need to undo this process in this case. Even if the records were not sent the email because of Communication Limits, they would still be made members of the campaign or program. If you were going to try to re-send these records that were blocked due to communication limits you could try this Filter combination: Member of Smart Campaign/Member of Program and Not Was Sent Email Those 2 filters will show you the members that were not sent the email, and then you could re-send them at a later time.

Issue What type of formats are accepted for uploading data to Facebook custom audiences from Marketo? Solution Note: The phone numbers must always have the country code included even if they are in the same country as your business.. The endpoint for facebook allows the following formats: 1-234-567-8910 12345678910 +44 123 456 7890 With or without punctuation is allowed.

Issue You are trying to access the Marketo site, but keep reaching a screen telling you your browser encountered an error. These error messages include: "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE" or "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN" Solution Flush the DNS Cache on your local machine. To do so: Open Windows command prompt as admin (you can do this by searching for command prompt in Windows, then right clicking it and selecting "run as administrator") Run the command: ipconfig /flushdns The command will return a simple completed message or will prompt you for another command when it is done Re-open your browser and go to the site you wanted to reach Please note: The DNS Cache is cleared on a normal reboot too. However, the hosts file on your computer will be used during startup to put in new DNS entries, so it will never appear completely empty if you open cache.

Issue A webhook that looks to be structured the same as other functioning webhooks is failing with HTTP Error 400: Bad URL request. Solution A 400 error message usually means that the request was malformed. In other words, the data stream sent by the client to the server wasn't formatted in the exact way required by the receiving service. You will need to work with the service you are trying to reach to figure out the exact cause of the error with the webhook.

Issue Are Marketo forms responsive? Will they auto adjust their layout to the size of the screen depending on if they are mobile or desktop? Solution The form layout can work responsively on mobile and desktop depending on how you have it setup. If your form in whole is never wider than your intended screen size (like a mobile at 480pixels), then the form will not differ on mobile devices from its desktop view. If your form is too wide, you can alter the layout using custom CSS on the form code to make the form fit within the mobile browser screen size bounds. How to edit CSS of a Form is covered here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Edit+the+CSS+of+a+Form+Theme

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Adding SFDC Link to the Lead in Reports

Email Program Sends in Activity History Show Different Program Name

Member Status Incompatibility When They Appear to Match in Marketo Program and SFDC Campaign

Adding Multiple Social Media Accounts with Marketo

Revenue Cycle Explorer Filter Logic

Smart Campaign Audit Trail Is Missing Event

How to Sync New Marketo Person Records to Salesforce

Form Pre-fill Is Not Working on When Tested from Sample Emails

Custom Object Data Missing for Lead

Expired User Invite Email

ToutApp: Unable to Delete Template Categories

Get Lead Activities REST API Is Not Returning Any Activities

Marketo Sales Insight in SFDC Is Not Sending Email to People as Expected

Acquisition Program Not Being Assigned after Filling Out a Form

Re-Sending Emails 'Blocked By Communication Limits'

Compatible Phone Number Formats for Facebook Custom Audiences

Unable to Access Marketo - Errors DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN and ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE in Windows

Webhook Error: HTTP Error 400: Bad URL request

RCE is unable to save your file Error

Are Marketo Forms Responsive?