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Included in this article Overview Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Hard Bounces Soft Bounces Bounce Details Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields 2. Create a Program to house everything 3. Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details Overview Bounce activities carry details for why the email was bounced, but it’s housed within the activity log entry, not in a field on the lead record, so it’s difficult to export that data. This article will show you how to extract that information to create a directory of leads bouncing emails and how to make the list automatically update. This will also create counters for bounces and successful re-deliveries after bounces happen. Data you’ll get from Email Bounces Bounce Categories Email bounces come in different types depending on why the email was bounced; Hard Bounces or Soft Bounces. Hard Bounces Hard Bounces come in two types, Category 1 and Category 2. Category 1 bounces are emails that have been marked as spam by the recipient mail server. Many email servers monitor blacklists or spam traps, so after de-listing with them, leads that have had a Category 1 bounce previously may be able to receive emails again. Category 2 bounces occur due to an email address that is invalid or doesn’t exist. Soft Bounces Soft Bounces come in three different types, Categories 3, 4 or 9. Category 3 bounces are usually temporary, caused by full mailboxes, timeouts, or throttling. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 4 bounces are caused by technical problems, Transient Failures, Admin Failures, DNS Failures. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Category 9 bounces are unknown, undetermined or gibberish details. Any email with this designation has been retried for up to 24 hours (36 for AOL). Bounce Details When an email is bounced, the recipient mail server includes details of why it was bounced. These are created by the admin of the recipient mail server and vary greatly, but most will give some explanation that can give valuable information. Email Bounce Codes Building the Directory 1. Create 6 custom fields You’ll need 6 custom fields, two DateTime fields, two Score fields, and two String fields Name the DateTime fields “Bounce Date” and “Email Delivered After Bounce”. Name the Score fields “Email Bounces” and “Deliveries After Bounces” Name the String fields “Email Bounce Details” and “Email Bounce Category” Directions for creating Custom Fields can be found here: Create a Custom Field in Marketo 2. Create a Program to house everything Use a default program type and name it "Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails". Info on creating programs can be found here: Create a Program 3. Create a Static List This static list will be your actual directory that contains all of the leads that are currently bouncing emails. Name it "Active Bounce List". Info on creating a static list can be found here: Create a Static List 4. Create two Smart Campaigns These two Smart Campaigns are what will be used to add and remove leads from your active bounce list. Info on creating Smart Campaigns can be found here: Create a New Smart Campaign Smart Campaign One - Logging Email Bounces with Bounce Details Your first Smart Campaign will be used to listen for any email bounces that occur. The campaign will populate the “Bounce Date”, “Email Bounce Category” and “Email Bounce Details” fields. It will then add one point to the “Email Bounces” score field which can be used to count how many bounces have occurred per lead. Lastly, the campaign will add the lead to the static list which will be an active directory of leads who are bouncing emails. Campaign Smart List Use the two triggers of “Email Bounces” and “Email Bounces Soft” in the Smart List. Set both triggers to “is any” so that they will fire whenever any email bounces for any reason. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 5 flow steps. The flow will use a System Token and some Trigger Tokens, which can be used to pull details out of the action that activated the trigger. In this case, the Trigger Tokens will be pulling out the details on why the emails were bounced. That info is in the bounce message and is logged in the lead's activity log. Normally you'd have to comb through the activity log one at a time to find these details for each individual lead. This method, however, will pull the details out automatically for all leads. Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Bounce Date” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Data Value. Attribute: “Email Bounce Category” New Value: {{trigger.category}} Flow Step 3: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Bounce Details” New Value: {{trigger.details}} Flow Step 4: Change Score Score Name: “Email Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 5: Add to List List Name: “Active Bounce List” Smart Campaign Two - Remove Leads From the List After Successful Deliveries Campaign Smart List The Smart List of the campaign will need a trigger for “Email is Delivered” set to “is any” and also a filter of “Member of List” looking just for leads that belong to your Static List. This way, the campaign will only apply to leads who have had an email bounce but have then had an email successfully delivered afterwards. Campaign Flow The Flow of the campaign will have 3 flow steps to do the following; log when the email was delivered, add a point to the "Deliveries After Bounce" Score Field, and remove the lead from the "Active Bounce List". Flow Step 1: Change Data Value Attribute: “Email Delivered After Bounce” New Value: {{system.dateTime}} Flow Step 2: Change Score Score Name: “Deliveries After Bounces” Change: +1 Flow Step 3: Remove from List List Name: Operational.Active Bounce List 5. Create Custom List View Showing Bounce Details The custom fields you’ve created for email bounce information won’t show automatically in the view of your list. You can create a new view of the list to show just this information so that when it is exported it will give you only the email bounce information you need. Once the list has the necessary details, it can be exported with those columns included so that you can work with it. You can identify emerging trends and issues with your deliverability by looking for common themes among the bounce details. Directions for creating Custom Views can be found here

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(Article Updated - August 2024) Overview A blocklist is a database of IP addresses or domains that have been associated with the sending of unsolicited commercial email or spam. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and business email networks use information from blocklists to filter out unwanted email. As a result there can be a drop to inbox delivery rates if the IPs or domains involved with sending email are listed on a blocklist. Marketo’s Email Delivery and Compliance team monitors blocklist activity on our IPs and domains daily. When an impactful listing occurs, we reach out to the blocklist, attempt to identify the sender that triggered it, and work with the blocklist organization to get the listing resolved. There are thousands of blocklists, most will not have a significant impact on your delivery rates. Below, we have compiled a list of the blocklists that commonly appear across our sender ecosystem. Each blocklist has been grouped into a top tier (Tier I) by most impactful, to the bottom least impactful tier (Tier III). These may have little to no impact across our sender network. Tier I Blocklist Spamhaus (SBL) Impact: Spamhaus is the only blocklist that we categorize as a Tier I for a reason: it has by far the greatest impact on delivery. It is the most well-respected and widely used blocklist in the world. A listing at Spamhaus will have a negative effect on your ability to deliver emails to your customer’s inbox and can cause bounce rates of over 50%. Evidence suggests that most of the top North American ISPs use Spamhaus to inform blocking decisions. How it works: Unlike many blocklists, Spamhaus lists senders manually. This means they are proactively watching sender activity, collecting data, and base listings on a number of variables. Most commonly senders are listed for mailing to spam trap addresses that Spamhaus owns. Sometimes Spamhaus will list senders based on recipient feedback as well. Next Steps: Please note that every Spamhaus email can be quite different depending on the information provided and the nature of the listing . Because Spamhaus has multiple types of listings, the remediation steps are based on which type of blocklisting has occurred. We have listed the most common types to affect Marketo customers, from most to least impactful. Impact can range from a full block of top severity, to a partial block that is less severe (CSS Data, DBL). If remediation isn’t performed and the problem not addressed, these listings can increase in severity and turn into a full blocklisting. Spamhaus Blocklistings Types SBL (full blocklisting) Considered the most impactful. Remediation steps: Our team monitors closely for Spamhaus listings. Once alerted to the listing, we send an email notifying the customer, and reach out to the Spamhaus contact to start the remediation process. Only a Marketo delivery team member should be in direct correspondence with the Spamhaus contact, to speak on behalf of the customer, and to relay their questions and instructions, ensuring quick resolution and reduced impact. Senders that trigger this listing on a shared IP range will be moved to a more isolated, penalty range (IPB), so as not to impact the other shared senders. Those affected on a Dedicated IP, only impact their own sending and will not be moved. However, depending on the severity of the issue, our team may need to revoke a customer’s ability to send any emails until full resolution. The listing will last until Spamhaus is satisfied that the offending sender has taken the appropriate steps to mitigate the problem. SBL CSS Customers are alerted of the listing with an email containing all the information needed to immediately begin the remediation process. This is part of an automated trigger listing, that allows for a customer to delist directly on the Spamhaus website, after they’ve completed remediation. Remediation steps: Customers will go to the Spamhaus IP lookup website, at https://check.spamhaus.org, where they can check on the status of their IP and continue to monitor it in real time, until it is no longer listed there. Follow the remediation and delisting instructions provided, and check for specific details in the blocklist notification email. DBL (Domain blocklisting) Customers will receive an email notification alerting of the company domain being listed. The email will contain specific information to help narrow down and identify which email source likely triggered it within Marketo. It’s important to note that any email sent from outside of Marketo, that contained the company domain, is suspect. This means, if the sender uses multiple IPs and/multiple email platforms, then any of those could be the source. Remediation steps: Follow the detailed instructions in the email, which will also provide a link to the Spamhaus Domain reputation checker webpage, to check the real time listing status of the affected domain. Once the email source is identified and cause addressed, this customer will follow the online instructions to request to be delisted. Tier II Blocklist SpamCop Impact: SpamCop is not used by any of the major North American ISPs to inform blocking decisions, but it makes it to the Tier II list because it can have a significant impact on B2B email campaigns. SpamCop is considered a Tier I one blocklist for B2B marketers but a Tier II for B2C marketers. SpamCop is a dynamic IP blocklist, that can affect a single IP or a subset of IPs Typically, the block will automatically lift within one business day, but can take longer for relisted IPs. To have triggered a SpamCop listing likely means the sender has a list management problem that should be addressed. How it works: SpamCop lists IPs for one of two reasons: Either the email hit SpamCop spam trap addresses OR A SpamCop user has reported the email unwanted. Most of SpamCop’s spam traps are previously valid addresses that have not been active for 12 months or longer. Remediation steps: If you are seeing a significant number of bouncing emails caused by a SpamCop blocked IP but aren’t sure if your email activity triggered the listing, first identify whether you are sending on a shared sender network or not. If sending from a shared IP range when this occurs, you or any other customer sending from the same network may have contributed to the IP block. This IP block will automatically get dropped within a business day. For those on a Dedicated IP that trigger a listing, refer to the above remediation steps and resources, to address the list management issue. Tier III Blocklist (Low/ No impact ) These are considered the lowest tier and therefore cause the least impact across the Marketo sender ecosystem. Some of these blocklists were more impactful at one time, while others are only impactful based on the sender region (Manitu). Others still can suddenly flare up (Lashback). There are also many blocklists that are ignored (0spam), and are not taken seriously because they do not provide any means to delist once on the list (NoSolicitado) or that they charge money to have the listing removed ( UCEPROTECT ). The pay-to-delist model is not well respected in the email industry. When using blocklist tool checkers, such as MXToolBox, many blocklists will appear, but very few are relevant. Here is our selection of Blocklists you may come across that are least impactful: Project Honey Pot SpamAssassin URIBL/SURBL DrMX PSBL 0spam HostKarma Ascams ZapBL Barracuda Trendmicro Inc. Cloudmark Proofpoint Invaluement ISP Blocklists Some ISPs use internal blocklists to make blocking decisions. Examples include AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook and Hotmail. If your IP is being blocked by one of these networks, and those networks have a large presence in your lists, a block of this kind could have a noticeable negative impact on delivery. Marketo monitors for significant ISP blocks. Those experiencing deliverability issues with emails not making it to the Inbox and bulking in the spam folder may benefit from additional services with our Email Delivery Consultants. Remediation Steps: Email Delivery Compliance Team works to resolve any ISP blocks. ISP blocks are are usually resolved or lifted within less than 24 hours of a delisting request. Customers experiencing significant blocks for Microsoft domains (outlook.com, live.com, microsoft.com), can submit a request to the delivery team to seek mitigation on their behalf. Additional Resources: Blocklist Deep Dive Abuse Report Deep Dive What is a spamtrap, or spam trap, and why does it matter? Blocklist remediation Blocklist resolution flowchart Successful lead reconfirmation What is a blocklist?

Issue Issue Description When using a Velocity scripted my.token, the default value is not being used if the field the Velocity script is pointing to is not populated. Solution Issue Resolution The reason for this is because Velocity script isn't designed to consider a default value the way that a lead token would. It's designed to execute the code to provide the rendered value. Although the UI specifies to look for a default, that's ignored by design since the code itself is only looking for the value for those leads. If the goal is for it to evaluate and provide a known value, otherwise then render a specified default, that needs to be built into the Velocity script code itself.

Issue My SFDC production instance is undergoing Instance Refresh Maintenance in SFDC. Will this impact the SFDC and Marketo sync? Salesforce Article: Help And Training Community Solution Provided the org ID of your SFDC environment stays the same, it will remain connected to your Marketo instance. As best practice, double check with your SFDC team that all of your SFDC records will retain their unique IDs after the refresh. After the refresh occurs, double check that the Marketo connection in Marketo (under Admin > Salesforce) is intact.

All the Recommendation Bar customization options are available within the RTP account settings page: Colors: Link Color: select the color from the dropdown choices. Background Color:select the color from the dropdown choices. Font: Font Size: type in the size in the 'Font Size' field (must be in pixels - px) Font Family: type in the 'Font Family' field Arrow Icon Color: select the color from the dropdown choices. Icon Font: select the icon style Icon Opacity: define the opacity level for the arrows Advanced customization There is additional customization can be done by the support team: Horizontal Bar Position: bottom (default) /top Vertical Bar Position: right (default) / left

Issue The URL for the landing page shows as "https" even though you do not have SSL set up on your Marketo instance, causing the browser to display a "Not Secure" warning. Solution This can happen if the primary domain and DNS are SSL secure, but Marketo is not. For instance, if your primary domain is "mycompany.com" (SSL secure) then the DNS, which is also SSL secure, will push down the "https" transfer protocol down to all the CNAMEs on that DNS. This will force the Marketo landing page using the CNAME to use "https" in the URL, even though it is not secure. There are two ways to resolve this: Work with your IT department to see if there is a non-SSL option for your DNS Purchase SSL for your Marketo instance so that both your primary domain and your Marketo pages are SSL secure. If you would like to add SSL to your Marketo instance, please contact your Account Manager to see about adding that to your subscription.

Issue You created lists in SFDC and Marketo with identical filters/constraints for a field on the Opportunity Object, but the Marketo list is returning many more leads than the SFDC list. Solution The issue is due to Marketo field string values not being case-sensitive. Salesforce is case-sensitive, and will generate Opportunity IDs with the same letters, but with different capitalization arrangement. For example: In SFDC: "0060y000016PzXw" is a different Opportunity ID than "0060y000016PZxW" In Marketo, these two IDs are considered identical. As a result, Marketo will return leads that are not showing up on the Salesforce list. Adding the varied-case ID to the SFDC list filters will return the extra leads from Marketo. Smart List filters are not case-sensitive in Marketo, and will qualify leads with matching field values, regardless of letter case. One work-around option would be to use a 'Company Name' filter (or other known value) to further limit the leads in Marketo associated with the Opportunity. Who This Solution Applies To Customers synced to SFDC

Any emails being sent as part of 'Forward to Friend' will create that user as a new lead (provided that the lead does not already exist in Marketo). When leads are created in Marketo via the 'Forward to Friend' feature, Marketo automatically unsubscribes the lead records in order to protect our global customers from anti-spam laws. This is because a lead being sent a forwarded email doesn't qualify as opting in to a mailing list and also prevents them from getting any other emails by accident.

Issue You need to filter leads who were sent an email by time zone to confirm the Recipient Time Zone feature is working correctly for all leads. Solution The "Was Sent Email" and "Opened Email" filters do include the constraint "Date of Activity" but it is not that granular. You can get granular to the minutes, but you can only select "in past: 5 minutes" for example, not a specific time or date range. One workaround would be to View Results for the Email Program and filter for the "Send Email" activity. You could export the results to a spreadsheet to make sure people are being sent emails at the correct time.

Issue You are seeing updates in Microsoft Dynamics to a field named Birthmark but do not see the field in your Marketo instance. Solution 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.

Article Text Included in this article Overview The Issue The Explanation Overview Sometimes you'll see an organization show up as "ISP - Anonymous - Proxy" in your visitors list in RTP. The Issue RTP is a powerful product with an immense database, but not every ISP can be found. When we receive a visit from an ISP we can't identify, instead of omitting them from our results, we use the name "ISP - Anonymous - Proxy" and set the location to "United States. The Explanation Pretty much any free Wifi signal you find like at a library or coffee shop will be listed as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The admins for that ISP service can configure their network in any way they would like, including whether they allow for identification of their network. If there is no data provided, there's nothing for RTP or any other service to gather. In that case, that's when you'd see the "ISP - Anonymous - Proxy" listing for a visitor in RTP.

Issue A Smart Campaign with a "Person is Created" trigger, in combination with additional filters, doesn't qualify people as expected. Solution Using filters with "Person is Created" triggers can cause issues when a person is created, but the values that the filters look for aren't filled in yet. When the Smart Campaign checks the filters, the data it looks for hasn't been filled in yet, so people don't qualify. Here are a couple alternatives: A scheduled batch campaign that looks for people who were created and meet those filters. Use the Person is Created trigger, but use a wait step to allow time for the date to fill in, followed by choices in the flow to qualify people.

Issue Our organization understands that Marketo has a durable unsubscribe field. Is that the only field that is durable or are other fields like block listed, marketing suspended, etc... durable? The scenario here is if someone is deleted, then later comes back in via SFDC for example -- are other fields durable and thus, carry over to a newly created record with the same email address? Solution The durable unsubscribe is the only field that will persist if the lead re-enters Marketo. This is because we host that data in a separate database, whereas fields such as 'Block Listed' are hosted in your local database. (When the lead is deleted, then all data is wiped for that lead in the local database.)

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 You try to approve a segmentation and get the error message of "No possible draft" even when there is a draft in place. Solution This error message can be a little misleading, as there usually is a draft in place. Check to make sure that segments in the draft have Smart List filters in place and that there are no empty values in the smart lists. An example of an empty value would be "First Name is ____" instead of "First Name is Joe."

Knowledgebase

Maintaining a Directory of Leads Bouncing Emails

Top Blocklists - What You Need to Know

System.DateTime Token Timezone

Velocity Scripted Tokens Not Using Default Values

Activity Log Filter Not Shared to Other Users

SFDC Production Instance Refresh

What are the Recommendation Engine customization options in RTP/Web Personalization?

Browser Displays Not Secure Warning When Viewing Marketo Landing Pages

Unexpected Leads Showing Up On Smart List with 'Opportunity ID' Filter vs. SFDC List

Unsubscribed Occurs When ‘Forward to Friend’ Email Is Received

Smart list that shows leads created in Marketo

Checking Email Send Times for Recipient Time Zone Sends

MS Dynamics - What Is the Birthmark Field?

Web Personalization (RTP) - Organization showing "ISP - Anonymous - Proxy"

New People Didn't Qualify For My Campaign

Are There Other Durable Fields Besides Unsubscribe?

Advanced Landing Page Template Development

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

Champion/Challenger Test Email Notification Shows Unexpected Results

Azure Marketo integration not working even though configuration correct

Segmentation Cannot Be Approved with Error Message “No Possible Draft”

Standard Landing Page Template: Veeam