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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

Featured article

(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 You receive a Marketo email and an email address in the text is blue and underlined, which does not match your desired styling for the email. Solution When an email address is simply included in the email text, the email client's default behavior may automatically convert it to a link with blue text and an underline. In order to override this default email client behavior, use the following HTML: <a href="mailto:[email address]" style="[custom styling]">[email address]</a> When the email address link is inside the anchor tag <a>, the email client will not override this custom styling that you wish to use. This can be used for tokens as well: <a href="mailto:{{lead.Email Address}}" style="[custom styling]">{{lead.Email Address}}</a>

Issue You created a Smart List, but did not define the filters (example: "Member of Smart List" with no Smart List named) and are wondering if this will cause no leads to show up in the results. Solution If you create a Smart List and you do not define any filters, this will cause all leads in your database or leads visible in the partition and workspace to appear in your results. This can create problem if you have nested Smart Lists. For example, if you have a Smart List with the filter "Member of Smart List = Lead not in" with Smart List A selected, and Smart List A has no filter, this logic will cause you exclude all leads in your database.

Issue Links placed into emails by a token are not being tracked and do not show successful click activity in the lead/person record. Solution When Marketo sends emails, you can think of building the email in 2 steps: Marketo searches the email code for "http" or "https" and wraps the tracking code around the URL Marketo inserts the values of {{tokens}} into the email. If the {{token}} value is www.domain.com, that would be expected to not track because of the above 2 steps. After the {{token}} value is inserted, Marketo does not go back to wrap tracking code around http/https. The {{token}} doesn't look like a URL when the system applies the tracking code because the tokens don't pull the values in until the next step after. The solution to tracking tokens is to place or on the outside of the token, like such: {{token}} That way, when Marketo builds the email, in step #1, the system recognizes the http and knows it's a URL. Then the tracking is wrapped around the http and the {{token}} as well. Then in step #2, the {{token}} value is inserted into an already-wrapped link. Keep in mind is that if the {{token}} value contains http, but http is on the outside of the {{token}}, the link will break. Let's say the URL you want to insert is www.domain.com. You have to move the out in front of the {{token}}, but you don't want to also have it inside the {{token}} as well or your link ends up being http://www.domain.com. To get around this, you'll need to remember to take the out of the {{token}} value. {{www.domain.com}} would instead be {{www.domain.com}}

Issue Leads that qualify for a Smart Campaign run through the flow with a Change Data Value flow step, but some leads don't have a data value changed, while other flow steps still apply. It seems that those leads have just skipped the Change Data Value step and went right on to the next flow step. Solution If the new value for the Change Data Value is exactly the same as the current value in the lead record, Marketo will skip that flow step. There won't be an activity entry in the activity log or results tab because the action did not actually happen. Example Say you had a field called Favorite Sport and a lead that already has the value of "Football" in that field on their record. The flow step is Change Data Value: Attribute: Favorite Sport New Value: Football In this example, a lead will run that through flow step, but since the value did not change Marketo will just move on to the next flow step.

Issue After moving an asset to a new folder, you are unable to see the asset in the tree, or see duplicates of the asset in both the new and old location. Occasionally, this may occur even when you have not recently moved the asset. Solution Sometimes when an asset is moved from one folder to another, it may not display correctly in the navigation tree. This is generally due to a caching issue. Try refreshing the browser or logging out of your Marketo instance, then logging back in. If this does not clear the issue, contact Marketo support to have us clear the tree cache for your instance.

Issue Campaign has a "Visits Web Page" trigger and a wait step in the flow. Leads are showing as being in the wait step, but are not shown in the Campaign Members tab Solution The leads do not show up in the Campaign Members list because they are anonymous. Anonymous leads can trigger "Visits Web Page" but do not show in the campaign membership. They can go through the flow, including going into wait steps. To prevent this, add the filter "Email Address is not empty" to the Smart List for your campaign. This will prevent anonymous leads from being pulled into the flow.

Issue You are seeing updates in Microsoft Dynamics to a field named Birthmark but do not see the field in your Marketo instance. Solution The Birthmark field indicates whether the lead was created in Marketo or MS Dynamics. If the Birthmark field is blank, the lead would be a CRM-created record. If the Birthmark field contains the value 'mkto', then the record was created in Marketo.

Issue You see that a lead has an unusually high amount of Clicked Link activity for a particular email after delivery. Solution There can be a couple reasons for this. If you see that all links in the email are being clicked immediately upon delivery, it is likely that the lead's email security software is link-testing to guard against phishing or malicious links. However, if you see an unusually large number of link clicks over the course of a day or two, it may be that the lead forwarded the email to other people who clicked on the links. Since the tracking links are specific to the lead who was sent the original email, if the email is forwarded to other people, their clicks will be recorded under the initial lead's activity history. Marketo does not have a way to confirm this is the case, but if you open the Click Link activities in the leads Activity Log and look at the details, you may see the User Agent (which indicates the operating system and client software used to display the email) is different for each click. If you see a variety of different user agents in the details, it is likely the email is being opened and clicked by different people who were forwarded the email.

Issue You try to merge two records in Marketo, one SFDC Lead and one SFDC Contact, and the merge fails. Solution When you are trying to merge a Ccontact record with a Lead record and the Lead record is losing record, Salesforce will try to convert that Lead record to Contact and merge both records in SFDC and Marketo. If the Marketo Sync User in Salesforce does not have permission to convert the SFDC Lead to a Contact, the merge will fail in Salesforce and in Marketo. To see if this is the problem, log into SFDC using the Marketo Sync User credentials and try to merge the records in SFDC. If you cannot merge the records while logged in as the Sync User this means that the Sync User does not have permissions in SFDC to covert a Lead to a Contact. To resolve this ask your Salesforce Admin to change the permissions on the Marketo Sync User to allow it to convert leads.

Issue What happens when you enable "Send all Tout emails in my team through this server connection" within the SMTP Server settings on ToutApp.com. Solution When you select "Send all Tout emails in my team through this server connection" within the Tout admin panel, this will provide the option to all standard users to either choose to use the ToutApp Email Servers or your company's own Email servers. If you decide to share the SMTP Settings with the team, t is recommended that you have your IT team setup a dedicated STMP/Email account to use as the Custom SMTP Credentials. Note: Each user can choose to either use the Tout servers or the configured & shared SMTP server. It is not applied automatically to all users.

Issue You sign up for ToutApp and receive a notice that your account is under review or your account is not verified. Solution If you sign up for ToutApp using a generic email address such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook or other email providers your account may require verification by Marketo Support. Please contact Marketo Support with the following information. Company Name: Business Address: URL(s) of your primary Web site(s): What is your average weekly and/or monthly email volume? Do you purchase, or have you ever purchased lists of leads? If yes, which providers have you used and when was your last purchase?

Issue A person record in Marketo is getting created by the CRM sync even though there is a previously existing record existing in the Marketo database with the same email address. Solution By design, Marketo does not run the standard de-duplication process on records that come from your CRM. If you wish to prevent duplicates from coming over from your CRM, you would need to hide them from the Marketo sync user on the CRM side, or work with Marketo support to set up a custom sync filter. Instructions for Creating a Custom Sync Rule

Issue A lead qualified for a Smart Campaign even though they do not meet the Smart Campaign filter requirements. Solution At the time the campaign ran, the Smart List was configured differently, which made the lead qualify at that time. The Smart List of the campaign was then changed after the campaign ran. Users with admin permission can check this using the Audit trail https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Change+Details+in+Audit+Trail#ChangeDetailsinAuditTrail-AssetAuditTrail

Issue Changing your primary domain can be a bit of a daunting task if you don't know where to start, this guide will walk you through the steps you will need to take to use a new domain with your Marketo instance. Solution Create your new CNAME and point that to your Marketo instance. If this new CNAME is going to be used as your primary domain, then the Domain Name in Admin > Landing Pages will need to be changed to reflect your new domain and your old domain should be added as a domain alias so any old links will be redirected to your new domain Add Additional Landing Page CNAMEs Adding a new branding domain is recommended when changing your domain. This will allow tracked links in emails add a tracking cookie when being directed to your new domain. A new CNAME will also need to be created for this and will need to point to the original tracking link for your instance. Add an Additional Branding Domain with Workspaces If you plan on signing your emails with your new domain, setting up a new SPF/DKIM record is recommended to help keep your deliverability rates as high as possible. Set up SPF and DKIM for your Email Deliverability Set up a Custom DKIM Signature

Issue Why don't some emails appear as an 'Email Filter' option in an Email/Email Link Performance Report? Filter Assets in an Email Report documentation Solution The reason why some emails do not appear as an 'Email Filter' option in an Email/Email Link Performance report is because the emails were used in an A/B test. Similar to the product behaviour illustrated below, when adding an A/B test, the selected email will not be directly selectable or appear as an Email Filter option in an Email/Email Link Performance report. "When adding an A/B test, the selected email will no longer be available for use in any other program." Add An A/B Test In order to report on the A/B test emails that do not appear in the Email Filter option, the parent program can be selected.

Issue An email appears to have been sent twice to the same lead when it should not have been. Solution It appears that the record was sent the email twice because the record was merged with another record after the email was sent. So when the email was sent, the record was two separate records that was sent the email individually. This can be identified by looking at the record's activity log for a 'Merge People' activity

Issue How to identify in which campaign the "Delete Person" flow step is used. Solution You can identify it by going to "Campaign Inspector" in Marketing Activities. From there you can filter down by type of Smart Campaign and search "Delete Person" and the resulting list will be Smart Campaigns containing that flow step. If you do not see the Campaign Inspector, contact Marketo Support to have it enabled.

Issue Error "API is not enabled for this Organization or Partner" occurs during Marketo - Salesforce integration. Solution This is a Salesforce generated error and indicates that API access is not available in your SFDC instance. For more information, see this Salesforce documentation: http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/sforce_api_calls_concepts_core_data_objects.htm . To resolve this, contact Salesforce to enable API access.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Received Mail Has Email Addresses Underlined and Blue

Smart Lists With No Filters Defined

Tokenized Links in Email Not Being Tracked

Leads Skipping Change Data Value Flow Steps

Assets Duplicated or Missing from Navigation Tree

Smart Campaign Has Leads in a Wait Step That Do Not Show Up in Campaign Members

MS Dynamics - What Is the Birthmark Field?

Lead Record Shows an Unusually Large Number of Link Clicks for an Email

Merge Fails When Trying to Merge a Lead with a Contact

Email Server Used When Sending Tout Emails from Salesforce

ToutApp Custom SMTP Team Settings and How They Work

ToutApp Account under Review

SFDC/MSD – CRM Syncing Duplicates to Marketo

Lead Qualified for the Smart Campaign Unexpectedly

Changing Landing Page and Tracking Link Domain

Reporting on A/B Tests Emails in Email Reports

Email Was Sent Twice to One Record

How to Identify Where the “Delete Person” Flow Step Is Used

SFDC Integration Error: API Is Not Enabled for This Organization or Partner

550 Rejected by Header Based Anti-spoofing Policy