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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?

When a Lead/Contact is deleted from Salesforce it is not automatically deleted from Marketo. If you want to delete these left over Leads/Contacts do the following: 1. Create a campaign using the SFDC Is Deleted filter set to True for the Smart List. 2. For the Flow step choose the Delete Lead action and set the Delete Lead from SFDC to True. This will ensure that the Lead/Contact will be deleted from both Salesforce and Marketo.

Quick points: *Spamtraps are addresses owned by antispam organizations *Emailing a spamtrap (usually) gets your IP or domain blacklisted *Maintain current, direct opt-in with an active lead database to avoid this What is a spam trap or spamtrap? A spam trap, or spamtrap is an email address secretly owned by an antispam organization that is used to detect spam. Antispam organizations do not sign up for mailing lists, so they consider any email sent to these addresses to be spam. Once email is sent to the spamtrap, the antispam organization that owns this address will blacklist the IP that sent the email (or, less often, domains that are linked in the message). Email administrators purchase subscriptions to various blacklists, and use the lists to block all incoming email from listed IPs or containing listed domains. From the marketer’s perspective, this can mean a high number of bounced emails leading to low lead engagement, and ultimately to weak revenue performance. There are two types of spamtraps – pristine traps, and repurposed/recycled traps. A pristine trap is an email address that was never used by a person. A repurposed trap is an email address that once belonged to someone but is no longer a valid address; these addresses will bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before an antispam organization will turn them into live traps.< How can a spamtrap get into my Marketo lead database? Purchased data Purchased data is unreliable. The antispam world does not like the use of purchased data so antispam administrators have made a concerted effort to get spamtrap addresses into the databases of data vendors. While data vendors may say they provide opt-in data in reality consent should be direct to your company./p> Sending unsolicited email is prohibited by the Marketo Terms of Use because this practice has a high risk of causing blacklist issues that can destroy deliverability for multiple Marketo customers. To avoid spam traps get direct opt-in before sending email. If you have purchased data in the past we recommend setting any inactive purchased leads to marketing suspended or simply removing them from your database. Old data Repurposed traps are email addresses that were once valid but are now owned by an antispam organization. This can happen when a company goes out of business; expired domains are often purchased by antispam organizations. Sometimes a company that has a direct partnership with an antispam organization will allow email addresses of former employees or users to become spamtraps. Because antispam organizations will generally make sure future spam traps return a bounce as bad addresses for at least six months before they become spam traps you can prevent repurposed traps in your database by emailing remaining engaged with everyone in your database at least once every six months. Avoid “wake the dead” campaigns to addresses you have not contacted in more than six months. Unconfirmed form entries People can unintentionally enter spamtrap addresses into forms either by making a typo or by intentionally using a fake email address that happens to be a spamtrap. If you use single opt-in, you may add spamtraps to your mailing list. This is more likely to happen if you are a B2C company or if someone thinks they can get whitepapers or free trials simply by filling out a form with made-up information. How can I identify spamtrap addresses? Spamtrap addresses are considered trade secrets by the antispam organizations. They do not share these addresses because their goal is for senders to change their mailing practices rather than to simply remove spamtraps from their mailing lists. That said, one thing we do know about spamtraps is that they tend to be automated processes and do not engage. Spamtraps do not click links. You can use smart list filters to identify inactive leads in Marketo. How can I prevent spamtraps in my database? Maintain active, direct opt-in for all leads. Don’t purchase data. (To grow your list, sponsor events, use list rental services that send the first message for you, or use co-branded content that sends you only good leads) Email everyone you want to email at least once every six months Don’t add old data directly to your mailing list. (If you need to, add in small batches and send a welcome email with a slightly different subject to each batch.) Regularly clean your database of inactive leads Grant access to assets such as free trials and whitepapers as email links to discourage intentional use of fake email addresses on forms Use scripting on your forms to identify potential typos

Issue The Results tab of a Smart Campaign with a filter for 'Send Email' is has more entries than the Send Email count on the Email Performance Report. Solution Page through the results as some Send Email activities will be 'Skipped Lead/Person already used up Daily/Weekly communication limit.' Also, if some of the leads were sent the same email previously, outside the time frame of the report, they will not be included because they report only looks at the first time any given email was sent to a lead. Subsequent sends of the same email will not be included in the report.

Do you need a report that shows you a programs success over time? We have you covered. Here is how: 1. Open Revenue Explorer. 2. Click New Report. 3. Select the Program Membership Analysis area and click OK. 4. Find the Program Channel yellow dot, right click it and click Filter. 5. Find your program channel, select it, add it and click OK. 6. Double click the Program Channel yellow dot to add it as a column. 7. Double click the Program Name yellow dot. 8. Find and double click the Success Month yellow dot. 9. Finally double click the Success (Total) blue dot. Now that's what I call a fine job! Check out your report:

Issue Executing a GET API call to retrieve a list of available activity types in the target instance using the '/rest/v1/activities/types.json' endpoint, resolves with an unexpected attribute name for a field with the display name ID in the context of Marketo Custom Objects. An example of that may be a Marketo Custom Object with the following name: '3 to be', as can be shown in the image below: One of the '3 to be' Marketo custom object fields name is 'ID'. (highlighted in red). When performing a GET API call using the '/rest/v1/activities/types.json' endpoint, you will be getting a list of available activity types in the target instance, along with associated metadata of each type, however for a Marketo custom object with an ID field name, you may see it returns back with a slightly different name, in this case, it would be returning the following output for my test Marketo Custom Object activity: { "id": 100019, "name": "Add to 3 to be", "primaryAttribute": { "name": "3 to be ObjRef", "dataType": "integer" }, "attributes": [ { "name": "3 To Be Person Id", "dataType": "integer" }, { "name": "ID (3)", "dataType": "string" }, { "name": "Linkfield4", "dataType": "string" } ] } ], Here's an image of what it may look like when making the call using POSTMAN: In fact, the character in the brackets next to the ID field represents the very first character of your Marketo Custom Object name. Environment Customers who have Marketo Custom Objects where one of the custom object fields is named 'ID'. Solution If this is interrupting your business, you may want to select a different name for the ID field under your Marketo Custom Object. (ie. ID number, Transaction ID etc.) Root Cause This behavior is expected and is a result of the 'ID' field being a unique field in the context of Marketo custom objects world and while it may be possible to create a Marketo Custom Object field with the name 'ID', it may be better to give it a distinct name that will be better describing what kind of ID field it is.

Overview RTP works very closely with your Marketo Lead Database to pull information about previous visitors, which makes it important for Marketo and RTP to keep accurate and matching information about visitors. There are 3 scenarios that can arise based on how much information is known about the visitor, and each is handled differently. These scenarios are described below. New Lead with no Email Address and no Marketo Cookie When this kind of lead fills out a Marketo form: Their Marketo cookie is created Lead details will be updated and the Marketo-RTP sync process is initiated The lead will then be known to RTP and potentially eligible for personalized campaigns Lead with Email Address but no Marketo Cookie When this kind of lead receives a Marketo email campaign and clicks on a link in the email: A new Marketo cookie is created for them This creation initiates the Marketo-RTP sync process Known Lead with an Email Address and Marketo Cookie Any changes to the lead's data will be synced between Marketo and RTP within 5 minutes

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

Issue Issue Description After merging Person Records in Marketo, the Marketo Custom Object that was present on one of the duplicate records is now missing. Solution Issue Resolution Marketo Custom Objects (CO) Records are linked with Person Records by a set link field value. We will see CO records disconnect from merged duplicate person records when the record linked with the CO record is merged into the winning Marketo person record. For example, Person Record B is linked with a CO record. Person Record B is merged with Person Record A, and Record A is designated as the 'winner' of any conflicts and remains after the merge. The CO record is now disconnected. The solution is that the CO record needs to be reconnected to the intended remaining person record after the merge. The solution can be applied before or after the merge. Before the merge: The person records need to be reconciled so that the one remaining after the merge has the link field value, and the CO record needs to be reimported into the Marketo instance. The CO record should now be reassociated with the person record. After the merge: Confirm the remaining person record has the appropriate link field value, and then reimport the CO record into Marketo. The CO record should now be reassociated with the person record. Who This Solution Applies To Clients with Marketo Custom Objects

The imported programs reside in a folder titled “Program Library Imports”. The import operation pulls in all the assets (email, landing page, email template, landing page template) and a Readme file. The Readme file contains the names and sizes of the images referenced by the email. You can replace the images by uploading files of the same name into Marketo. The contents of the emails and landing pages are also editable. Caution: We do not recommend modifying the email template or landing page template as this is a common cause for the templates to break. Is this article helpful ? YesNo

Unfortunately, we can only provide you with whatever information the blocklist provided to us. This information should all be included in the notification email you received from us. If that notification did not contain any information about the email campaign that triggered the blocklist issue, please contact Support. Additional Resources: Can you give me the spam trap address that triggered the listing? What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? What is a blocklist? How does Marketo respond to bocklisting and spam notifications? Top blocklists - What you need to know Blocklist Remediation Successful Reconfirmation

Issue You have a field (e.g. Most Recent Website Visit) that you want to see previous values for without needing to look through the activity log. Solution This can be done using a few custom fields, and one trigger campaign. Make duplicates of the field you want to see most recent values of (e.g. Most Recent Website Visit 1, Most Recent Website Visit 2, etc.) while still keeping the original field. Use the original field as you previously have, but set a trigger campaign to look for data value changes to that field. In the flow of that campaign, set the logic like so: (1) Change Data Value: Most Recent Website Visit 3 new value: {{lead.Most Recent Website Visit 2}} (2) Change Data Value: Most Recent Website Visit 2 new value: {{lead.Most Recent Website Visit 1}} (3) Change Data Value: Most Recent Website Visit 1 new value: {{lead.Most Recent Website Visit}} Using the above flow, the most recent values for the field can be checked without looking into an activity log. This can be useful in a number of ways, for example this information could be included in an email or alert. Another example, if the primary field (in the above example it is Most Recent Website Visit) is updated to a value that it should not have, then you can setup another campaign to update Most Recent Website Visit using the value in Most Recent Website visit 2 to restore the previous value. Warning Please Note: The above process can be somewhat resource intensive (particularly if a large number of records trigger the campaign at close to the same time), this should be done with as few fields as possible to assure good instance health overall.

My export is going to take a long time, do I have to stay logged in until it completes? Thankfully no, once you get your Import or Export started, you can log out, go grab some coffee or go home and the process will continue. Export: When you start the export process, you can close out of Marketo, later in the day or the following day you can log back into Marketo, find the same SmartList or StaticList you ran the export from, select it, click on List Actions and choose "Show Export Status". The Export dropdown will show up and assuming it is finished, the download link will be available. 1. Find and Click on the SmartLists or StaticList: 2. Click on List Actions then "Show Export Status": 3. The dropdown will pop open in the top right hand corner with the export status or the download link: Import: Similarly, you can get an Import started, when you choose the CSV and begin the process the first step is for the file to get uploaded to our server where it will be further processed and imported into the database. Once the file is uploaded and the import process begins, you can close out of Marketo and come back to check on the status in the future instead of staying logged in the entire time. In a similar manner to checking export status, you can click the StaticList you are importing into as follows: 1. Find and Click the SmartList or StaticList you are Importing into: 2. Click on List Actions then "Show Import Status": 3. The dropdown will pop open in the top right hand corner.

You might have noticed that the Field Lead Source is labeled differently in the Marketo Interface. The API name is “LeadSource” with the friendly label being “Lead Source”. API Name Friendly Label LeadSource Lead Source Is this article helpful ? YesNo In the Field Management section of the Admin panel, Lead Source is referred to as "Source"; not to be confused with the Opportunity field “Lead Source”. Similarly to the Field Management, Lead Source is also labeled as “Source” in the column and column chooser of the Lead Database. The Attribute in the Smart List will be labeled “Lead Source” as well as in the Form Designer.

Included in this Article: Overview Checking for Segment Matches Reasons for not Matching Typos Non-exact Matches Overview Using segments, you can target specific organizations by using the Named Accounts attribute in the segment editor. With this attribute, you can select all organizations in a Named Account List or by manually selecting organizations. However sometimes we see one of those organizations visiting the website but it doesn't match the segment, even though it is included in the segment list. Checking for Segment Matches If a list was created manually, it's possible the organization wasn't included in the segment list in the first place. To check: Go to the Organizations tab Use the search bar to search the name of the organization in question If the organization was entered in the list correctly, it will be found through the search. If it does not appear in the search results, there are two issues that are likely to have arisen. Reasons for not Matching Typos Luckily, typos are easy to fix. Simply edit the organization's name to match the spelling you wanted it to take on. Non-exact Matches Even if an organization is spelled correctly, it will still not match the organization listed in the segment if the names aren't exactly the same. It is very common for companies to have different names for their organization. To fix these non-exact matches, you'll have to be clever about how you name your organizations. In RTP, an important character to know is the wildcard character, represented by an asterisk (*). A wildcard character will match with any character or sequence of characters For example, the string "Salesforce*" will match all three of the above spellings ("Salesforce.com", "Salesforce.com Inc.", and "Salesforce Ltd") because they all begin with "Salesforce". For more examples on how to use wildcard characters, follow this document: RTP Glossary - Marketo Docs However, you must be careful using wildcards characters, because you could potentially match organizations that you didn't intend to match. For instance, the string "Salesforce*" will not only match the three examples above, but also a company named "Salesforce Finance", a completely different company.

Issue Issue Description Smart Campaigns with email flow steps do not show when they ran on the Marketing Calendar. Solution Issue Resolution Smart Campaigns must be scheduled using the "Run later" selection for one time batches. If the campaign was set using the "Run now" option for a one time batch then there is not a "scheduled" run time to reflect on the Calendar. In order to have Smart Campaigns reflect on the Calendar use the "Run later" option.

Issue An Event Program in Marketo connected with ReadyTalk has some members with the status of "Registration Error" and a Status Reason of "Error registering with webinar provider. exception='Ready Talk API call error: ERROR -> HTTP Code ='403". The LaunchPoint connection in the Admin area may also show this error. Solution This error is an API call that Marketo is getting back from ReadyTalk, and will apply to the individual record that encounters the error but doesn't impact subsequent records that are attempted to be synced. Additionally the LaunchPoint page displays the status of last API call and, if it failed, it displays that information there, but the error will go away when subsequent registrations are successful. This error can be caused by any of the following: Meeting is in a closed state - this can occur when either people try to register after the event is complete, or the date and time of the meeting is changed in ReadyTalk without using the "Refresh from Webinar Provider" feature in Marketo Meeting is cancelled. First name, last name, or email address is missing on the registration form. The format of a registrants email is invalid. (This usually occurs when a registrant enters something like .con instead of .com) The meeting title length is invalid, it must be between 1 and 300 characters. First name field exceeds 125 characters. Last name field exceeds 125 characters. The answer provided in a registration field exceeds 255 characters (i.e. Title, Company, Address, etc). If people are registering after the event is complete, one possible recommendation would be to have the registration landing page redirect to another landing page after the event has either initiated or completed, which provides people the opportunity to register for subsequent events. This way people that attempt to register for the event after it has concluded will not be able to do so, but they will be provided the option to register for future events. This will prevent people from trying to register for an event that has ended and closed, preventing future 403 errors. This doc walks through how you can do this: experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/demand-generation/landing-pages/landing-page-actions/redirect-a-marketo-landing-page-to-another-page.html?lang=en Who This Solution Applies To ReadyTalk integration users

Issue Issue Description After submitting a form on a landing page, the Thank-you page fails to load, or it loads the wrong page. Solution Issue Resolution The Thank-you page used by the form can be defined in two places, at the Form level and at the Landing Page level. If these two are in conflict, the setting on the Landing Page wins. To troubleshoot this issue, compare the two Thank-you options and make sure the Landing Page is either set to the correct page, or that it allows the Thank-you to be form-defined.

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

Clean up Leads That are Still In Marketo After Being Deleted from SFDC

What Is a Spamtrap and Why Do They Matter?

Email Performance Report Send Count Is Lower than the Campaign Results for Send Email

Build a Program Membership Analysis Report that Shows Your Success Timeframe

Get Activity Types via API returns a character wrapped in brackets for a Marketo Custom Object field named ID

Web Personalization (RTP) - How does Lead Data Syncing Work from RTP to Marketo

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

Merging Person Records Disconnects Marketo Custom Object Record

Where do I find my Imported Templates in Marketo?

Can you give me more information regarding the blocklist issue?

How to Retain Previous Values in a Field While Adding New Values

Replace an Uploaded Image or File

My Import/Export Is Going to Take a Long Time, Do I Have to Stay Logged in Until It Completes?

Lead Source, Friendly labels and the Marketo Interface.

Show or Hide a Form Field Dynamically

Troubleshooting Web Personalization (RTP) - Segment not Matching Organizations Visiting the Website

Marketo Support for TLS 1.2

Marketing Calendar Does Not Show Some Email Smart Campaigns

ReadyTalk Webinar Registration Error 403

Correct Thank-You Page Does Not Load After Form Submission