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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 Description You have a record in Marketo that is a Contact in SFDC, and the record fails to sync with the error "INSUFFICIENT_ACCESS_OR_READONLY: insufficient access rights on object id." Issue Resolution This error can occur if the Record Type ID field is not updated in Marketo when the SFDC Lead is converted to a Contact. If the Record Type ID value displayed in Marketo is not valid for Contacts, the sync will fail with the error, "INSUFFICIENT_ACCESS_OR_READONLY: insufficient access rights on object id." To resolve this, you can update the Record Type ID in Marketo with the correct value from Salesforce, or you can delete the value from Marketo and allow the sync to write the correct value from Salesforce.

Issue Description A record in Marketo failed to sync to Salesforce due to a Field Validation error. Issue Resolution The lead was unable to sync to Salesforce because the value for a specific required field was missing or did not match the rules Salesforce had for the data in the field. For example, the field in Salesforce could be a picklist and the value Marketo is trying to pass in the field is not in the picklist. Salesforce always requires a Last Name and a Company Name value for all records, so if your lead is missing data in these fields, the sync will fail. To resolve this, check Salesforce to see what the acceptable values are for the field specified in the error, and make sure the Marketo record has the necessary information. If you need further assistance with this, we recommend working with your SFDC Admin to determine why Salesforce is rejecting the record. Who This Solution Applies To Customers integrated with Salesforce Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description Campaign has a "Visits Web Page" trigger and a wait step in the flow. Leads were showing as being in the wait step, but are not shown in the Campaign Members tab Issue Resolution 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 Description Admin > Sales Insight > Licensed Seats displays the number of seats used in the last 30 days. How is this calculated? Issue Resolution The number of seats used is calculated by the number of unique SFDC users that have loaded either the Sales Insight panel on a Lead/Contact/Account/Opportunity page layout or accessed the Marketo tab in the past 30 days. Who This Solution Applies To Customers with Sales Insight for Salesforce Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description You are building a new email template/editing an email, utilizing the system token for the unsubscribe link, and are wondering about the expected behavior of the token. Issue Resolution The system token unsubscribe link, below, will always behave the same way, and it cannot be customized. {{system.unsubscribeLink}} The {{system.unsubscribeLink}} will always bring you to: sub.domain/UnsubscribePage.html. If your Landing Pages are not branded, this system token will still behave the same way and take the lead to your out-of-the-box Marketo Unsubscribe Page (ending in /UnsubscribePage.html).

Issue Description You want to find the day that a piece of predictive content was discovered. Issue Resolution There isn't a direct way to see the exact date a piece of content was discovered. What you can do is filter the results to content discovered during a specific time frame. Go to the "All Content" tab. Select the Calendar on the upper right side Choose the time frame and click Apply. Result: You will see only the content that was discovered during that time frame. Who This Solution Applies To Customers with Real-Time Personalization (RTP) or Predictive Content. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description You are considering archiving or deleting old programs, and you are wondering how that will affect the Lead field: Acquisition Program. Issue Resolution If you delete a Marketo Program, the field will append a "deleted" at the end of the Program Name. For example, if the Program Name was "July 2016 newsletter" for Acquisition Program, after deleting the Program, the field value would change to: "July 2016 newsletter - deleted (####)". The numbers represent an activity ID on the backend. Note: Archiving Programs does not affect the Acquisition Program. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description You are considering archiving or deleting old programs, and you are wondering how that will affect reporting on membership of leads. Issue Resolution If you delete a Marketo Program, the membership data will be lost. Technically, in the Lead record Activity Log, there will not be an activity for "no longer in program," but any and all reporting will not be able to report from deleted programs. Keep in mind that Marketo Support cannot restore deleted programs. Archiving Programs keeps program membership data. This means that Analytics reporting, including Revenue Explorer, will be able to see archived programs and the related data. However, smart lists will no longer be able to reference the archived program. For example, say the smart list was: "Member of Program, program is [name]". In this situation, the smart list wouldn't be able to locate the program. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description A newly created Program is not showing up in Program Cost Analysis Report. Issue Resolution The Program Cost Analysis Report takes a little time to show new Programs that have just been created. It doesn't do much good to show a success metric before a program has had a chance to succeed so it needs time in order for data to be collected. If you don't see the program in the report within 48 hours, check these things: If there is a view filter in place The program is active and approved If all that looks good contact Support for additional troubleshooting.

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 Description You are seeing updates in Microsoft Dynamics to a field named Birthmark but do not see the field in your Marketo instance. Issue Resolution 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. Who This Solution Applies To Microsoft Dynamic Users Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Issue Description You created a smart list, but did not define any filters, and are wondering if this will cause no leads to show up in the results. Issue Resolution 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 list. 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. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

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 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 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 Description You want to know the difference between a field with the type of string and text area. Issue Resolution Both a string and text field will hold information that you can freely write in. The major difference between the two fields is how many characters you can put in these fields. A string field has a limit of 255 characters, whereas a text field has a character limit of 30,000 characters. A string field is a good choice if you wanting to store data like address, names, or simple custom data. A text area field is a good choice when you want to store information from something like a comment box on a form or if you are importing a large block of text. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Overview For added security, we have added functionality to validate that email tracking URL hash codes originate from the same domain in the subscription. A unique email tracking URL hash code is what is used to identify which Marketo instance the link is coming from, enabling the tracking functionality in your emails. Example Here’s an example of how an email tracking URL is constructed: Enhancement being made: This enhancement will add extra validation to the tracking URLs used in your emails. When our tracking server receives the link, it will use the URL hash code to identify the Marketo instance. It then looks up the branding domains associated with the subscription. If the domain presented in the URL matches a branding domain we have listed for you, the link will connect just as it should. If the domain in the URL does not match a domain in our database, it will be considered suspicious and will be stopped and a "404 error" will be displayed.

Issue Description The activity log is not recording the number of opens for an email send. Issue Resolution Email opens are linked to an individual asset. If a record is sent the same email more than once, only the first open activity will be recorded. If you are not seeing opens record for a record, search the activity history to confirm whether or not the asset has been opened previously. Who This Solution Applies To All customers Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

SFDC Contact sync fails with error "INSUFFICIENT_ACCESS_OR_READONLY: insufficient access rights on object id"

Lead Failed to Sync to Salesforce with a Field Validation Error

Smart Campaign has leads in a wait step that do not show up in Campaign Members

How 'seats used' is calculated for SFDC Sales Insight

{{System.unsubscribeLink}} Behavior

Content Discovery Date

Program Acquisition when deleting and archiving programs

Analytic Reporting: Program Membership when deleting and archiving programs

Program Cost Analysis Report not showing a Program

Same File Name in Different Workspaces

Changing a Segment

What is the birthmark field?

Smart Lists With No Filters

Marketo User with 2 or More User Roles

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

Email Permission Error

The difference between a field type of string and text

Email Tracking URL Security Enhancement

Email Opens not recording

Passing Marketo Activities into Microsoft Dynamics