Many of our emails are bouncing due to blacklisting of Marketo's email address | Community
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Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
Level 10
February 28, 2017
Question

Many of our emails are bouncing due to blacklisting of Marketo's email address

  • February 28, 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 6220 views

We employ many email best practices to ensure our deliverability is as effective as possible.  In fact, we just recently deployed Informatica’s email validation/verification service.  Just before an email went out this morning we validated every email address against this service.  We then pruned all emails with a bad/suspect status code. Yet, when we sent the email, almost 10% bounced (over 650).  After looking at a random sample of bounce reasons in the activity log, it appears our email address – or more specifically, Marketo’s mktomail.com domain – is being blacklisted with several of our contacts:

  • 553-Sorry, your email address 857-NHG-455.0.48440.0.0.17771. 553-9.489756@em-sj-77.mktomail.com has been blacklisted. 553-Refer to the Troubleshooting page at 553-symanteccloud.com/troubleshooting for more 553 information. (#5.7.1)

We're even on the preferred range of IP addresses.  I've opened a ticket with Support, hoping that they'll route this to the deliverability team.  Have any of you experienced a large volume of these, and if so, did that team help un-blacklist you?

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6 replies

Grégoire_Miche2
Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10
February 28, 2017

Hi Dan,

You may want to involve Kiersti Esparza in this thread She is Marketo's Director, Email Privacy and Deliverability

-Greg

    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_Author
    Level 10
    February 28, 2017

    Thanks Greg.  @Kiersti Esparza, any thoughts?

    Josh_Hill13
    Josh_Hill13
    Level 10
    February 28, 2017

    If you fill out the form or work with the Privacy team on automating your processes, it can help.

    But this may  not have been caused by you...if you are using a shared IP. Some things to note:

    • purchased lists will have a higher bounce rate
    • older leads will bounce higher if you haven't been working them.
    • Informatica isn't perfect and it's possible to bounce. How strict were you with their codes?
    • are you  invalidating bounced leads earlier?
    Dan_Stevens_
    Dan_Stevens_Author
    Level 10
    February 28, 2017

    I just learned from Support that we're on the Shared IP range.  We were placed on the Trusted range back in August 2015 - no one ever told us that we moved back to the shared range (which is also concerning since we have specific clients where we have given them the trusted IP range of addresses to ensure our emails get delivered to them).  I'm further investigating this.

    We've suppressed the following Informatica status codes:

    • 250 (Email Valid, Potentially Dangerous)
    • 260 (Domain Confirmed, Potentially Dangerous)
    • 270 (Analytics in Progress, Potentially Dangerous)
    • 300 (Email Not Valid)
    • 310 (Not Verified)
    • 400 (Invalid Input)
    • 500 (Internal Error)

    As for invalidating earlier bounced leads, yes, in fact we're using the approach that's well-documented in your Rockstar Guide!

      Josh_Hill13
      Josh_Hill13
      Level 10
      February 28, 2017

      There are a few other codes that you may want to remove. We only sent when we had 200, 210. But if you are sending internationally, you have to be less restrictive.

      Marketo does tend to shift people around on a Shared spectrum: bad people, ok people, trusted

      and you have to ask.

      A
      Anonymous
      March 10, 2017

      I have the exact Symantec error message from 2 out of my top 5 client email domains. Support was not able to help me and asked me to ask my clients (which are publicly listed companies) to whitelist Marketo. Support also shared that moving to Trusted IP or Dedicated IP will not help the issue.

      Pretty frustrated that we cannot send marketing emails to my 2 clients.

        Dan_Stevens_
        Dan_Stevens_Author
        Level 10
        March 10, 2017

        That's a pretty unrealistic request - especially for large public companies.  If anything, ask them to "whitelist DKIM-signed messages from a specific domain" - per @Sanford Whiteman​'s comment here: Re: Instructions for customers on how to whitelist Marketo

        Here's another thread regarding some of our email issues with our top clients: Re: Marketo emails showing up as BULK - with no ability to show images

        A
        Anonymous
        March 24, 2017

        Hi Dan

        I too have just experienced the same issues, and getting the same notification message as you. I will raise a ticket. Does anyone know if we can identify when and why the email address was blacklisted - is there a log?

        thanks

        Gary

        Grégoire_Miche2
        Grégoire_Miche2
        Level 10
        March 24, 2017

        Subscribing to a service such as MXToolbox blacklist alerts might be useful

        -Greg

          Josh_Hill13
          Josh_Hill13
          Level 10
          March 24, 2017

          250ok seems to have a nice automation for this tracking.

          A
          Anonymous
          April 10, 2017

          We have been seeing great deliverability to our customers until this weekend. We have two dedicated IP addresses and for some reason this happened to us. We have been seeing 97%+ delivered to yesterday's 65%. It's ridiculous. Have you made any progress?

          Steven_Vanderb3
          Adobe Employee
          Steven_Vanderb3Adobe Employee
          Adobe Employee
          April 10, 2017

          Hey Franklin, we'll take a look so go ahead and submit a ticket.

          A
          Anonymous
          April 11, 2017

          Hey Franklin - We had a similar issue when we first transitioned over to Marketo last year. We partnered with the Marketo Deliverability team and they were able to resolve all of our challenges. Tifaine Highly on the deliverability team is amazing. We now have quarterly check-ins just to confirm that there's nothing fishy going on.

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