Knowledgebase

Featured article

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 My token is not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email. Environment If customers manually type a {{my.token}} and use uppercase M such as {{My.token}}, then the view as webpage version of email may not render that token as expected. The feature to HTML encode lead tokens (source of external data) for security reasons, applies to my tokens that incorrectly use uppercase M. HTML Encode Tokens Solution Use the token picker to pick the correct lowercase {{my.token}}.

If the user makes changes to the my tokens, snippets, etc during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will those changes be reflected—No If someone unsubscribes during the processing of the an email that is using head start, will they receive the email—Yes Can you cancel a head start program once the processing of the an email that is using head start has begun—Yes What happens to the processing data when someone cancels a program during the processing of the an email that is using head start—It is deleted (I.e. Program membership, etc.)

Issue You receive the "Subject is empty" error when attempting to approve an email which contains an emoji character in the subject line, and elsewhere in the email, emojis may fail to render. Solution Marketo can render any Unicode character up to 5.2 and any ASCII character, but this does not encompass emojis. The Marketo email editor will strip out any unsupported symbols. This is because we cannot guarantee the consistency of their appearance across platforms, as not all clients can render all emoji. Marketo only supports the text symbols that are generally then converted into emoji's by the recipient client or operating system. The basic symbols in a list such as https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols should work, as they are ASCII characters and not reliant on extra encoding. These are a set of accepted text symbols that will universally work on all clients and many will convert them to emoji. Just highlight the symbol from https://www.copypastecharacter.com/symbols, copy and paste it into your email. Alternately, you can work around this by q-encoding the emoji in UTF-8 format, which will render a string of code to add to your subject line. This code tells the email client to render the desired emoji. All you need to do is copy your desired emoji and run it through a Unicode to UTF-8 translation tool, such as https://onlinetools.com/unicode/convert-unicode-to-utf8. As an example, say you want to send a Happy Birthday email to a lead. You could copy the (birthday cake) emoji and run it through a translator to yield the code "=?utf-8?Q?=F0=9F=8E=82?=" Entering this code in your subject line without the quotation marks will render the emoji on the client's end, and render it in the design most compatible with their device/browser. With any email design, it's always important to test before a live send to confirm it appears the way that you expect it to.

Issue An email program with "Send in recipient time zone" was scheduled to sent out an email on Jan 8th, 2019 8:00 PM PST but you see that it was sent out to leads on Jan 8th 12:01 AM PST. Solution From the activity logs of the lead, you can observe the following: 1. Send Email activity happened on Jan 8th 12:01 AM PST. This is when Marketo issued the Send request to the server, which held the request until 8:00 PM PST, per the time zone restrictions. 2. Email Delivered happened on Jan 8th 8:00 PM PST. The MTA (message transfer agent) pushed the held emails to the receiving servers. The send email event is an indication that the lead was qualified at 12:01AM but the actual delivery of the email happened at 8:00 PM. So, the send event means the leads were processed and prepared for email delivery. The delivery event is when the email is actually sent and delivered. You will see this behavior when emails are sent with time zone restrictions. For the complete details on Recipient Time-Zone and it's working , please refer to the following Adobe experience league document :- Schedule Email Programs with Recipient Time Zone

Issue The count for the audience of an Email blast program does not match the total members of the Email Program after it has been executed. Environment This issue is applicable to users who have recently run an Email blast program in Marketo. Solution The disparity in numbers occurs because the Audience Smart List is evaluated at the moment you access it. As your records evolve, this number can change after the Email Program is run. In contrast, the number of program members, who are the recipients that were emailed through the program during the scheduled run, is fixed at the point the program is executed.

Issue Users may notice that unsubscribed or blacklisted leads still appear within the Audience section of an Email Program. Environment This issue is relevant to all Marketo users who are managing Email Programs and observing the Audience list. Solution Despite being blocked or blacklisted, leads will continue to be displayed in the 'People' list of a Program or Campaign's audience, as they still fit the criteria for the Smart List of that particular asset. The Audience list includes all individuals who meet this criteria. The blocked leads do get recognized and listed under the Blocked list of that specific program. However, this Blocked list is considered a part of the broader Audience list. If you prefer these leads to not show up in your Audience, you can modify your Smart List filters. For example, apply the "Unsubscribed is False" filter. Root Cause This situation arises because the Audience count encompasses all leads that qualify for the Smart List, including those that are blocked or blacklisted. The system recognizes and lists these blocked leads separately, but they remain as a subset of the overall Audience.

Issue: I am looking for the ID to one of my campaigns for a SOAP API project I am working on. Solution: The ID can be found in the URL of the campaign. 1.1 Log into Marketo, under Marketing Activities, find and select the campaign in question. This is a article attached image 1.2 The URL to the campaign will look something like: This is a article attached image The Campaign ID is between "SC" and "A", in the above example it's "1150". This is a article attached image

Technically, you cannot move records backwards in a progression status. The only so called “backward” status that you can change the record to is a progression status of “Not In Program”; however, doing this removes them from the membership of the program. If you do this procedure, this will allow you to re-add them with a different status. We mentioned technically this cannot be done but logically, there is another method that allows you to juggle the record’s progression status but in a more lateral movement with what appears to be in a “backward” state. This is all dependent on how you have your channel steps configured. To access your channel steps, please do the following: Choose Admin Choose Tags Click the + next to Channel Locate the channel you wish to configure and highlight it Click the drop-down menu towards the top of Tag Actions, and select Edit You should now see a pop-up window that allows you to configure the status steps for that channel like the following example: This is a article attached image If you configure statuses that have the same step number, this will allow you to move the record in a lateral movement which, in a sense, is somewhat like a backward progression but it really isn't. With the example screen capture, I can do a change in progression status of “Invited” to “Attended Show” and vice-versa because the step is with an identical number. If I wanted to change in progression status of “Invited” to “Engaged” and back, it will not work because the step value is not identical. You can reference more information about this in the Create a Program Channel article.

Issue You would like an links in an email to be tracked, but need to eliminate the tracking URL parameter on the tracked links. Solution In the Email Editor, you can uncheck "include mkt_tok" in the Edit Link box. Adding a class "mktNoTok" to any Anchor Tag will allow you to keep the Link Tracking, but disable the Tracking Token Parameter from the URL. You may also edit the Head of the email HTML to make large sections with this class.

Issue Issue Description The user role has all the permissions to Design Studio, but whenever trying to preview an email, a limited access message is displayed: "You do not have sufficient privileges to perform this action" Solution Issue Resolution The user role must have permission to 'Access Database'. The full access to Database is not needed, just the main access by selecting 'Access Database' and unchecking everything else underneath. The reason for this permission is that, when previewing emails, you are able to select to preview an email as a specific lead. In order for this to happen, users will need access to leads.

Question: How do I add a link to my lead/contact's Salesforce detail page when sending an alert from Marketo? Answer: If the lead or contact is in both Marketo and Salesforce at the time when the alert email is sent, then the link to the Salesforce detail page will be automatically appended to the alert email sent by Marketo. Note You will need to use the "Send Alert Info" token within your Alert email while designing your email in the Design Studio of Marketo. This is a article attached image Below is what the generated alert looks like once it is sent from Marketo (note the link to the Salesforce detail page is automatically inserted): This is a article attached image Note if the lead or contact is not in Salesforce then there is no link to the Salesforce detail page: This is a article attached image

Question: I have leads that are getting created without providing information for fields which I have made required. Answer: Marketo's field validation makes use of javascript. Most browsers have javascript enabled by default so this should be fairly rare, but a user could change their settings and turn javascript off. This would allow them to submit a form without providing all the required information. This situation may also occur if a lead submits the first progressive profiling form and subsequently submits a second form with different questions, while also changing the email address (indicating either a different person using the same PC or the same person with two email addresses). Marketo will generate a new lead record, but it won't include the data captured in the first form. To identify if this is the case, examine the "Fills Out Form" activity and check if there is data submitted from a later progressive profile form. If so, this is likely the cause. To address this issue, follow these steps: Create a smart list with an Anonymous IP filter. Enter the anonymous IP address of the lead. The smart list may identify multiple records associated with the anonymous IP address. Merge or manually update the records as needed based on the identified information. By following these steps, you can reconcile the data and ensure that the lead records are appropriately managed.

Issue: When I try to approve an email I get the following error: Error approving Email Name - Sending IP is empty or not valid This is a article attached image Solution: You likely have multiple dedicated IPs and you did not choose which one to send this email from. 1. Edit Draft of the email in question. 2. Select which IP Address you want this email to sent from and click Save. This is a article attached image 3. Close the email editor and under Email Actions click on Approve.

Issue Embedded Marketo form not visible in Firefox Private Browsing mode. Solution Firefox's private mode will be enabled by default. When you embed a Marketo form in your own webpages and view it in Firefox's private mode, it will disable the Javascript as part of the tracking protection of this browser. JavaScript is needed for the forms to appear on the landing pages or webpages. The "Tracking Protection" in the Firefox browser will need to be deactivated for the form to appear. Here is an article from FireFox regarding the Tracking Protection: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection

Issue Email won't be approved due to too many custom tokens Solution Sometimes when approving an email with a large number of of tokens, the following error message will appear: 'The number of custom tokens in the email exceeds the limit ' This is a article attached image This means that you have too many custom tokens in the email and that if you wish to approve the email, you will need to remove one or more of your custom tokens in the email. Its important to note that this only applies to custom tokens, which are tokens based on a custom field in Marketo. This means that while you will be allowed to add more of the standard tokens to the email and approve it, you will not be allowed to go beyond the 40 custom token limit we have in place for the non-standard tokens. Here you will find all the standard tokens in Marketo

Issue Email asset does not show which template it was built on and shows the word "none" instead of the name of the template that was used to create that asset. Solution Any edit directly to the HTML code of an email will break the connection between the email and the template. Changes made to the template will no longer flow down to the email. After making those change you will see a template name of None instead of the name of a template. When editing the HTML in the email, you will see this warning message: This is a article attached image

Issue Sometimes email addresses that are CC'd can have emails bounce. This doc describes what to expect in these scenarios. Solution Sending Emails To address is valid, cc address bounces The email will be sent to the recipient but the cc'ed recipient will not receive it (since the address is invalid). Nothing in the Marketo UI will communicate that the email to the cc'ed address was undeliverable. To address bounces, the cc address is valid The email to the recipient will bounce normally. The cc'ed recipient will still receive a copy of the email. Nothing in the email sent to the cc'ed recipient will tell them that the To: the address was undeliverable. To address is valid, cc address is unsubscribed The email to the recipient will deliver normally. The unsubscribed cc address will not receive the email. Nothing in the UI will reflect that the cc'ed recipient did not receive the email because of an unsubscribe setting. The cc'ed address will not appear in the Send Email activity under the cc'ed attribute. Email Delivered This will not include details of the cc'ed email addresses. There is no log item in the UI to communicate that a CC email was delivered to the recipient or bounced. Emails in the inbox The cc'ed person will be in the cc field of the email the lead receives. The links in the email will be tracked for the person in the To: line. If the cc'ed person clicks the links in the email, the 'Click Link' activity will be logged on the lead in the To: address and the cc'ed recipient will be cookied by Munchkin as the person in the To: address.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

My token not displayed correctly in view as webpage version of email.

Head Start feature Q&A

Tokens Not Populating in ICS (Calendar) File When Sending Sample Email

Using Emojis in Marketo Emails

Email Program Appears to Send Emails Early

Email Program Audience Is Showing a Different Number Than the Program Membership Count

Email Program Displaying Blocked Leads in the Audience List

Find A Marketo Campaign ID

Backward Progression Status

Marketo Link Too Long? Keep Email Link Tracking, Disable Tracking URL Parameter

Limited Access Message Displayed When Previewing Email

My Landing Page is Showing the Wrong Title

How Do I Add a Link to My Lead/Contact’s Salesforce Detail Page When Sending an Alert from Marketo?

How Can Leads Submit Forms Without all the Required Information?

Error Approving Email: Sending IP is Empty or Not Valid

Enable Multiple Selections From a Picklist in Marketo Forms

Embedded Marketo Form Not Visible in Firefox Private Browsing Mode

Email won't be approved due to too many custom tokens

Email Asset Shows Template “None” Instead of an Actual Name

CC in Email Notes