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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 have created a Nurture Engagement Program and are running an Engagement Stream Report, and a stream is not showing on the report. Solution One likely cause for the stream not showing on the report is that the stream is not sending out content. Once the content in the Engagement Stream is being sent (cast), then the email activity will begin to show on the Report. In order to cast content, the cadence must be set. If the Stream Cadence has been set, and the stream is still not showing on the Report, another likely reason is that there are no leads in the stream. The solution here is to add records to the stream.

Issue User not able to see the "Global Reporting" feature within our Email Performance reports in Marketing Activities in non-default workspaces, as described in this product doc: - docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Report+Email%2C+Campaign+Performance+Across+Workspaces Solution The global reporting option is only available for reports in the Analytics tab and in Marketing Activities in the default workspace. Reports located in other workspaces will not have this option. Who This Solution Applies To Customers with Workspaces & Partitions

Issue Clearing cache and cookies in your browser will fix a number of different problems related to page display, browser errors, and login issues. Solution Here are links to the support articles on how to clear cache and cookies for the most commonly used browsers. Chrome Clear cache and cookies - Computer - Google Account Help FireFox How to clear the Firefox cache | Firefox Help Internet Explorer https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/278835/how-to-delete-cookie-files-in-internet-explorer Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge, browsing data, and privacy – Microsoft privacy

Issue You have Workspaces and Partitions in your instance, and a static list that used to contain certain leads is now missing those leads. The leads still exist in the database and there is no "Remove from List" activity in the Activity History for the affected leads. Solution This can happen when the workspace that contains the static list no longer has visibility to the partition that the lead record is located in. The lead may have been moved to a different partition, or the partitions that are accessible to the workspace may have been changed. To confirm whether this is the case, do the following Go to Admin > Workspaces & Partitions and locate the workspace that contains the static list Confirm which partitions are accessible to that workspace Go to the lead record of one of the leads that was in the static list before but is not now. See which partition the lead is in currently. If the lead's partition is not accessible to the static lists's workspace, the lead will not show up in the static list.

Issue Description You have a Smart List that should exclude a group of leads from a campaign, but they still show up in the Qualified Leads list Issue Resolution Check the filter logic for your Smart Lampaign. "Or" logic allows leads that only qualify for some but not all of the filters to be included in the membership. For example, you could have a Smart List with the following filters. SFDC Type = Contacts Unsubscribed = False (You are trying to exclude unsubscribed leads) Visited Webpage - company.com/products If you use the following Advanced logic - "(1 or 2) and 3" - you will still have unsubscribed leads showing up in the list because they are Contacts, and the logic says they can be either Contacts or Unsubscribed = False. They only need to satisfy one of the two filters to qualify, and an unsubscribed Contact would go through. There is a blog post that goes into more detail on this. Smart List Logic - How many people do you want in your club? Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Issue Description \Zoom connector registrants who register directly in Zoom are not being passed to the connected Event Program in Marketo Solution Issue Resolution The Zoom integration does allow for registrants that registered directly from Zoom to be passed to Marketo. The following document shows the process of setting the registrant push from Zoom to Marketo. The documentation is showing the setting at the account level, however this also needs to be done at the Webinar level. support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207267346-Setting-Up-Zoom-for-Marketo

Issue Description You want to know if it's possible to have the same file in both the Default workspace and another workspace. Issue Resolution You cannot have the same file name in different worksapces. For example, if you have a folder in your Default workspace named "Test" and then you try to create another folder called "test" in different workspace, this will not work. The same thing will happen if you try to clone a program to a different workspace and you use the exact same file name. When you are creating new folders or cloning programs, you must use a unique name.

Issue When using the GET Activities API with a specific list Id in the parameter, the response will get all the specified activities from other assets as well. This is the endpoint for this article. Solution Instead of using list Id (listId) as a parameter, change that to asset Ids (assetId) in the API call. The Asset ID (assetId) is the Id of the primary asset for an activity. Then, the response will narrow down the activities associated to the primary asset by looking up the Id during the call.

Issue Description You get an error message saying that an email or landing page is in use when you try to delete or even unapprove it. Issue Resolution If assets are being being used or referenced somewhere else in Marketo you cannot delete or unapprove them. Before you can, there cannot be anything listed under "Used By" section. Navigate to the place where it is in use and remove it from there. Once all asset dependencies have been removed you will be able to delete or unapprove the asset.

Issue Description When you invite a New User into a Marketo Instance, you are given the option to assign User Roles. What happens when you assign 2 or more Roles? How many Roles should be assigned? Issue Resolution When a user has 2 conflicting Roles assigned, Marketo will, more often than not, be more restrictive in its willingness to let the user perform the action if the other User Role does not have the permissions to do the action. Marketo Support often sees users assigned the Admin Role, as well as a Marketing User Role. The Admin Role has permission to do everything. Adding an additional Role can cause restrictive permission errors when that user is attempting to do something that the Marketing User Role does not have the ability to do. Example: A new User is assigned 2 User Roles each with different permissions. One User Role has the ability to approve email assets, and the other User Role does not have that permission. In that case, Marketo may restrict the User from being able to approve the email asset. There is not necessarily a limit to how many Roles can be assigned to a User. There is nothing prohibiting you from assigning multiple Roles to a new User. It is recommended that Users are invited with only one role assigned. The resolution could be to tailor User Roles for the specific person, or job position in mind.

Issue When you go through the "Add to Named Account" or "Remove from Named Account" flow actions, those changes sometimes aren't immediately reflected in the named accounts' dashboards. Solution ABM runs a recalculation task every 30 minutes to check for any changes in account scores, membership count, opportunity count, and pipeline for all of your existing Named Accounts. When you run a flow action to add or remove people from your named accounts, those changes will be reflected immediately in a smart list for "Member of Named Account". However, ABM can take up to 30 minutes to update, until the changes are captured by the next recalculation. If you are seeing a delay longer than an hour for your dashboards to update, submit a ticket to Marketo Support, and they can force a recalculation and investigate what could be causing the delay. Who This Solution Applies To All clients with ABM.

Issue Records processing through campaigns are not qualifying for the correct choice within the flow step logic and and are instead performing the default choice of do nothing. Solution To resolve this issue: Verify that the value of the choice matched the value of the record at the time that it processed through the campaign. Copy and paste the values from the choice step logic and the record detail in order to ensure that there are not additional characters that would prevent the record from qualifying for the choice. Even a small difference, such as a typo, will cause a choice step to skip.

Issue Is it possible to add code from a content management system (CMS) into a Web Campaign in RTP? Solution Marketo Web Personalization does not integrate with any content management system's (CMS) content to draw or pull content campaigns into the Web Campaign. Personalized campaigns need to be created within the Web Campaign editor. So what does this mean? When you are using HTML tags within the Web Campaign Editor in RTP, Marketo only supports the use of RTP HTML tags. On your own website you could have HTML tags and codes from other systems but within the Web Campaign Editor in RTP we only support RTP HTML tags. Note: The RTP Javascript tags works on all types of CMS platforms (Drupal, wordpress, sitecore, HTML pages, etc...) to identify visitors, segment them and show them personalized web campaigns. The above relates to the code used to render a personalized Web Campaign.

Issue Description You encounter the error "You do not have permissions to do this" in one of the following situations: When you are creating an email template, you click on the Validate HTML button When you are trying to edit an existing email Issue Resolution This error is caused by Javascript in the HTML of the template. Email clients do not often allow <script> and Javascript in their Emails, so even though the email asset may be able to be approved, the email will present this error if attempted to be edited again or if you attempt to validate the HTML. The solution in this situation would be to remove the <script> tag, including all Javascript, from the email HTML. After this, you should be able to edit the email or validate the HTML. If you are unable to actually edit the asset, the workaround is to clone the asset. If you clone the email, it can open in the editor and then you have the ability to remove the script. After this, the email will be good to go. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue When looking at a lead's email activity, you see that they clicked a link in an email, but there is no open activity recorded for that same email. Solution It is technically possible for a person to click a link in an email without opening it. An Open Email event is only logged when a single pixel tracking image is downloaded from the Marketo server, but many email clients, such as Outlook, don't download images by default. So someone could open the email, read and click it without choosing to download the images, resulting in a Click Email without a corresponding Open. Email performance reports have an additional logic in them that backfills the Opens. They know that to click an email you must open it. Smart Lists don't have this backfill, so the Opens in a Smart List will often be different than the Opens in a report.

Issue You click on a link in an email that goes to a page with a form, and the fields on a form are pre-filled with a different person's information. Solution When you forward an email that contains tracking tokens, the links in those emails are dynamically generated for the original sender. If you forward that email, then the links will still point back to the original person who received the email. This will cause form pre-fill and all activities to be tracked under the original person who received the email. To prevent this in the future, send an original email that has not been sent to a lead already. If you want leads to be able to forward emails to other interested parties, include the Forward to a Friend link in the email instead.

Issue You want to know if updated lead/person record data will reflect changes to that data made while the lead was in a wait step. This is important to know, because values could affect the following flow steps. For example, if there is a choice in the send email flow step that is determined by those values. Solution Any information that was updated while the lead was in the wait step will be reflected in the next step.

Issue When you are entering the names of Facebook Forms into Marketo triggers, filters, and/or other fields, Marketo may present an error (red-squiggle) under the name value, stating that the value is invalid. Solution The reason that Marketo states this value is invalid is because the Facebook Form has not yet been filled out for the first time. Only after an existing Marketo record has filled out the Facebook Form will the name value of the form be in the Marketo system. If you were interested in setting up a trigger campaign to trigger off Facebook Form fillouts, you would first have to fill out the form with a test record that exists in the Marketo Lead Database. For filters within a batch campaign or Smart List, or entering the form name in any other fields, the same resolution would apply: fill out the form with a test record that you are associated with in the Marketo Lead Database.

Issue When you set up an A/B test in an Email Batch Program (EBP), you have the option of manually sending the winner, or having the Marketo system send the winner automatically. If you have forgotten, or cannot tell when looking at a past approved EBP, there is a trick you can use. Solution When looking at the Control Panel in the Email Program, there is an option to "View A/B Test" in the square panel for selecting the email assets. When you click on this "View Test," at the bottom there will be something that says either "Send Report" or "Send Notification". "Send Report" is for a Manual A/B test, and "Send Notification" is for an Automatic A/B test.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Engagement Program Stream Not Showing On Report

Global Reporting Across Workspaces Not Showing for Some Reports

How to Clear Cache and Cookies

Leads Removed From Static List Without 'Remove from List' Activity on Record

Smart List is including leads that should be excluded

Zoom Webinar Registrants not passing to Marketo

Same File Name in Different Workspaces

Using API to get lead activities from specific asset

"In Use" error when trying to unapprove or delete an asset

Marketo User with 2 or More User Roles

Updates to Named Account Membership Not Reflecting in ABM

Smart Campaign Flow Step Choice Incorrect

Adding CMS Code to RTP Web Campaign Editor

Email Permission Error

Lead shows Clicked Email but no Opened Email in Activity History

Other People's Details Are Showing in a Pre-filled Form

Data Changes After a Lead Enters a Wait Step

Disable Universal ID

Marketo Won't Recognize the Facebook Lead Ads Form Name: Invalid Value Error

How to Tell If the Email Batch Program A/B Test Is/Was an Automatic or Manual Winner-send