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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 You see one value for Acquisition Program and a different value for Acquired By. What do they mean and how are they different? Solution Acquired By specifically means 'this program was responsible for creating the lead record'. Acquisition Program is an attribute that you are able to change, but Acquired By is something controlled by the system that designates when that program is directly responsible for creating the record. For example, if you had an SFDC Campaign that was synced to a Marketo program, and you added a lead to that Campaign, the lead would be synced down to the Marketo program. You could then use a Smart Campaign to set the value for Acquisition Program. However, the program would not receive Acquired By credit because the lead came from Salesforce and not from the program directly.

Issue Does the email address assigned to the API user need to be an email address maintained by an actual person? https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Create+an+API+Only+User Solution The email address assigned to an API user does not need to be an existing email address or an actual person. It is used as an identifier for the API user. Generally, customers name the API user according to the integration the API user is being used for (e.g. integrationuser@company.com). This is useful for tracking where API calls are coming from when there are multiple integrations configured with Marketo via the API

Issue Changing From address on multiple email assets at once instead of one-by-one by hand. Solution You can use program/folder tokens as the from address, and then change the token. Once the token changes it will update the assets using the token. For any pre-existing emails, updates in bulk could be made through a API call to the Marketo API endpoint - http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/assets/emails/#create_and_update.

Issue When forwarding email that was received via Marketo to other people, the email does not render the same in the recipient's email client. Solution This can happen when forwarding emails, as the email rendering capabilities depend upon the email client that recipient uses. HTML and CSS can be interpreted differently by different email clients. As noted in the comment below Some clients' HTML parsers don't understand all types of markup, for example an HTML4-level client will not recognize HTML5 elements. Some HTML elements and CSS rules are deliberately ignored, even if the underlying parser and (in the case of webmail) browser supports them completely The HTML markup is can be changed, sometimes drastically, from the original markup before being displayed for security reasons With that said, you can code against some of these anomalies by adding extra code in CSS to account for the differences. Marketo Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting custom code as we are not web developers. We would suggest that you consult with an HTML/CSS designer to make these changes. To ensure that the existing email templates are coded to comply with different email clients, it is advisable to consult with a web developer/designer to review the code. Here is a guide that you may find helpful: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css Furthermore, even if the clients are the same, the act of forwarding an email can itself change the HTML of the email. However, Marketo does have a workaround for this. You would just need to put the ‘Forward to Friend' link directly into an email and when the person forwards the email using this link, there is a reduced possibility of the rendering issue occurring. It also adds the forwarded email address to your Lead Database as an unsubscribed lead. The below article covers adding the ‘Forward to Friend’ link to your emails https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/'Forward+to+a+Friend+Link'+in+Emails

Issue Often times variables are used in emails and guided landing pages for marketers to quickly and easily change a link URL in a CTA button. However these links cannot be made dynamic when used with a variable. Solution The variable needs to be removed and replaced with an editable section or a rich text element. Once this is done the editable section or rich text element can be made dynamic. This will require some prior knowledge of HTML as the code of the asset itself will need to be changed. The links below will guide you through the syntax that needs to be used to modify your HTML. Create a Guided Landing Page Template Email Template Syntax

Issue You receive an error in ToutApp - "IMAP access is disabled for your domain. Please contact your domain administrator for questions about this feature. (Failure)" Solution This due to an invalid Gmail connection For this error message to be resolved, we recommend looping in with your Gmail Administrator regarding the IMAP access of your domain and whether or not it can be enabled. See the link below for additional reference on this for your Gmail Administrator: https://support.google.com/a/answer/105694?hl=en

Issue Emails with valid email address get soft bounced with this error: Local address contains control or whitespace. Solution This error means that the email has a space somewhere in the the From email address or there was a comma or extra character in the From line. If you do not see a space inside the email address, check the end of the address to see if a space somehow got added at the end. The email send did not occur due to the error with the address. The emails will need to be resent once after the associated address is corrected with white spaces or extra characters. Also, there is the possibility that email address "text" contains Paragraph marks or hidden formatting symbols (https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/f/formmark.htm) and instance users will required to have it reviewed and changed.

Issue You are trying to manually edit a lead record to remove the value of the Email field but the change doesn't save. Solution Marketo enforces this as a required field for deduplication purposes and won't allow a direct manual edit as a preventative measure. Removing the field can create duplicates, so it's generally recommended that instead of removing the field you maintain the record in your CRM or mark this record as marketing suspended to avoid inadvertent communications. However, if you need to remove the value there are two workarounds to this issue. 1) Create a smart campaign with smart list criteria that isolates that specific lead record, with a Change Data Value flow step. Specify Email as the attribute and the New Value as NULL. This will clear out the value for that field. 2) You can remove the email address from that record in your CRM. Marketo treats your CRM as the source of authority, so removing that value in your CRM will sync down to Marketo during the next sync cycle.

Issue You want to lock specific parts of an email, such as the From or Reply-To, to prevent certain users from editing them. Solution Through roles and various permissions you can prevent editing of the email as a whole. You do not have the ability to allow only partial edit of an email header such as the From/To. The same applies to Sales Insight emails. Edit permissions are granted for the email as a whole Note: You can prevent people from editing pieces of an email by making those sections non-editable on the template level, but again, this would apply to all users.

Issue When attempting to publish a landing page to Facebook, you get the error "Error when calling Social Campaign API. Warnings: Error while creating facebook tab." Solution If you haven't purchased Ad Targeting add-on for your instance, you could face this issue. You can contact your Customer Success Manager to include this add-on in your Marketo subscription. If you are facing the issue in spite of having ad targeting add on to your subscription, we would suggest that you contact Marketo support and we will be able to troubleshoot it for you.

Issue After deleting a lead or contact in Salesforce that has been synced to Marketo as a person record, attempting to merge that synced Person record with another Person record in Marketo keeps failing. Solution When a merge is performed in Marketo, the Marketo Sync User will first automatically attempt to merge the associated records in Salesforce. If the records have been deleted in Salesforce this attempt to merge the records in Salesforce will fail, meaning that the rest of the merge operation will fail in Marketo. To complete this merge, the best option is to perform the merge through the API. The Merge Leads endpoint allows you to skip the automatic Salesforce merge attempt that will always run when performing the merge through the Marketo UI. Marketo support does not troubleshoot or write custom API calls like this, so it is best to work with your in-house developer or IT staff to create these API calls. http://developers.marketo.com/rest-api/endpoint-reference/lead-database-endpoint-reference/#!/Leads/mergeLeadsUsingPOST

Issue You have a custom landing page template and are able to see that landing page is not rendering perfectly on the editor but works as expected when published. Solution As you are facing the issue on a custom template, we suggest you to follow the below steps. Download a template form the URL- experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/landing-page-templates/guided-landing-page-template-list.html In Marketo, navigate to the Design Studio Click Landing Pages in the left-hand tree, then select Templates. In the menu bar, click Import Template. Choose the downloaded file, enter a template name, then click Import (make sure to pick a descriptive name and indicate that editing mode is Guided). Create a new Landing page with the recently downloaded template without making any changes. If the default background image works on this landing page as expected, it confirms that the issue lies with the custom coding that was added to the template. Marketo Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting custom code. The best point of contact will be your web developer who should be able to resolve the issue for you. Please be aware that the landing page editor may not load all external resources in the editor or previewer, which can cause them to look different than the published version. If the background image doesn’t render on this newly downloaded template as well, contact support and we will assist in troubleshooting your issue.

Issue What BCC options are there for email sends? Solution Marketo support can enable BCC on request. If an email address is to be BCC'd on a batch email send, they'll get 1 BCC for every 1 email Marketo sends. (10k email sends = 10k BCC emails). This can be useful for archiving and compliance purposes, but should not be used for simple campaign confirmation. If you just want to make sure the email went out as scheduled, the easiest way is to create yourself as record in the database, and include yourself in the batch send. Only one BCC address is supported at this time, if multiple BCC recipients are required then it is recommended to create an alias which will forward the messages. This setting is applied to the entire instance, and will affect all emails sends from all Campaigns and Programs while enabled. Every email sent while this feature is enabled will result in a corresponding BCC email. CAUTION: Dedicated email address setup for the BCC email traffic must be able to handle high volumes of email. Discuss with your IT Team or email service provider to verify their Email Server can handle the estimated volume of incoming email. If the Email Server is not well equipped this feature can cause your Email Server to backlog, become unavailable temporarily, or reject the BCC emails. If the request is for a single email send, we recommend using the following CC process: Email CC | Adobe Marketo Engage

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Acquisition Program vs. Acquired By and What They Mean

API User Email Address

Changing from Address on Multiple Email Assets at Once

Email Rendering Issue in Forwarded Emails

Unable to Create Custom Fields under Opportunity Object

Can Variables in Emails/Guided Landing Pages Be Made Dynamic?

ToutApp: How to Customize Call Outcomes in Salesforce

Disable Niko from ToutApp Extension

Edit Schedule Email in ToutApp

ToutApp Error: IMAP Access Is Disabled for Your Domain

Delete Email from ToutApp Live Feed

Soft Bounce: Local Address Contains Control or Whitespace

Cannot Manually Remove Value of Email Field

Locking from Address and/or Reply-To Address on an Email

Adding Snippets to Templates

Error Publishing Marketo Landing Page to Facebook

Unable to Merge Marketo Records after the SFDC Record Synced to One of Them Was Deleted

Smart List That Shows Leads Created in Marketo

Troubleshooting Background Image Not Being Rendered on Landing Page Editor

BCC Options For Emails Sent By Marketo