Marketo Knowledge Base

Here are some details about how Marketo emails are sent and tracked. Before sending your email Marketo makes a couple of additions to your email before sending it: Replace all the email tokens (ex. "{{First Name}}") with their database or default valuesWrap all links with Marketo tracking informationAdd an invisible image to track opens   With those changes complete, Marketo will attempt to deliver your email to the recipient. Email sends and deliver events Once the email is sent from Marketo's servers, a Send Email event is added to the lead's activity log. If the mail was successfully delivered, Marketo logs an Email Delivered event. Email bounces Sometimes an email can't be delivered. Marketo will place these email bounces into two categories: Soft bounceSometimes an email isn't deliverable immediately, but might be okay later - for example, if a recipient's mailbox is full. This is a soft bounce and is logged as an Email Bounced Soft event. Marketo attempts to deliv

Emails sent with the Send and Track button in the Marketo Outlook Add-in are tracked like emails sent through the Marketo web interface with a few caveats. Tracking multiple recipients If you Send and Track an email with multiple recipients, Marketo will log all click and open activities to the first recipient in the To... field.  Activity done by other email recipients will appear in the first recipient's activity log. New leads versus existing leads When you Send and Track an email and the recipient doesn't exist in Marketo, a new lead will automatically be created. Marketo will do its best to identify the name and company of the lead from the email. When that's not possible, "mktUnknown" will appear in those fields. (Some CRMs will reject leads without a last or company name.) See this article for more: Send and Track an Email with the Email Add-In for Outlook - Marketo Docs - Product Docs When you Send and Track an email to a lead that already exists in Marketo, the em

Double opt-in is the gold standard of email permission. Also known as confirmed opt-in or COI, this practice is where a person fills out an opt-in form and is then sent an email and must click a confirmation message before they are added to the mailing list. Here are some great reasons to use double opt-in: Protects against typos and botsProtects against spamtrapsReduces bounce rates, improves deliverabilityRequired in some regionsIncreases engagement rates   If you'd like to set up double opt-in with Marketo you can do this with the use of the Marketing Suspended function. Marketing Suspended is a status that is functionally equivalent to Unsubscribe - Marketo will not send these leads marketing emails, but will send them operational emails. You'll need an opt-in form and a pair of trigger campaigns. First, set up a trigger campaign such that, when the form is filled out, the flow has a Change Data Value to mark the lead as Marketing Suspended, and then a Send Email step t

Traditional Bounce Codes When you add the Email Invalid Cause to display as a Column to any of your Deliverability Smartlists, you will see a code value, and potentially a suffix as well, to help you understand the reason for the Bounce.   Codes in the 400 range are generally Soft BouncesCodes in the 500 range are generally Hard Bounces Mail server administrators can create custom messages that accompany bounce codes Code Explanation 250 Mail accepted by receiving network 421 <domain> Service not available, closing transmission channel 450 Requested mail action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox busy) 451 Requested action aborted: error in processing 452 Requested action not taken: insufficient system storage 500 The server could not recognize the command due to a syntax error. 501 A syntax error was encountered in command arguments. 502

Question: Will the munchkin tracking code work on different sites? For example, my company has 2 domains DomainA.comDomainB.com. DomainB.com is a separate site for our blog. Will the munchkin code work on the 2nd site? I want to incorporate the 2nd site into my lead scoring measures.Answer:Munchkin CAN pass domains, however what it can not do is bring across information. Thus, if you have a domain of A, when a known lead passes out of domain A and into domain B, its activity will be tracked, however, it will be tracked anonymously. In addition, there will be no way to link the activity of a known lead in Domain A to the anonymous lead in Domain B, even though they're the same lead. The next step to tie the activity to one lead would be to do one or more of the following: Manually merge the separate anonymous leadsNurture the lead under each domain, send emails with tracked links to each domain, the activity will be tied together under that lead and automatically merged.  

*Updated in October 2025   What is a feedback loop (FBL)? An FBL is an arrangement between an email sender, such as Marketo, and an Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or email hosting service.  The FBL allows the email sender to be automatically notified when the user who receives an email marks it as spam.   When a lead who uses one of these ISPs clicks the spam button for an email, the ISP sends an automated notice to Marketo. Marketo automatically unsubscribes the lead with the unsubscribe cause, "Customer Complaint Received from ISP".  Marketo's Email Compliance Team also logs these complaints for internal compliance monitoring.     What FBLs is Marketo enrolled in? By default, all emails sent by Marketo are covered by an FBL with the following email providers: AOL BlueTie Comcast Fastmail gandi.net ItaliaOnline Laposte.net Liberomail Liberty Global Locaweb Mail.ru Microsoft (Hotmail, Outlook, Live, MSN) OpenSRS/Tucows Rackspace Seznam.cz SFR SilverS

Question: My campaign seems to be delayed, what is going on? Answer: You may have multiple campaigns running and some of them are queued. You can use the Campaign Queue to get an overview of all running and queued campaigns in your instance of Marketo.If there is a campaign backlog you can check the priority of the delayed campaigns and the campaigns at the front of the campaign queue. High priority campaigns will always move to the front of the line, followed by medium priority and low priority campaigns. If there are too many high priority or medium priority campaigns running then you may see a longer delay with low priority campaigns since they will always move to the back of the queue. You may want to consider overriding the campaign priority of non urgent campaigns that are set to high priority to reduce the priority and make room for lower priority campaigns to run. It is not recommended to set a large number of campaigns to high priority as this does not improve the processi

When making an unsubscribe page, there are a few things you should keep in mind: It is illegal to require a login for someone to be able to unsubscribe.You must offer an "unsubscribe from all" option.   Let them unsubscribe! While it's always sad to lose a subscriber, it is far better for someone to unsubscribe than for them to click the spam button or report your message as abusive. Your unsubscribe page should be as clear and easy to navigate as possible. If you offer a preference center, you must still include an unsubscribe from all option.      

Question: How are the Original Search Engine and Original Search Phrase fields populated?   Answer: Both fields are intended to be populated if the very first webpage visit is due to the lead clicking on a link from a search engine. If the lead logs their very first webpage visit to your website via directly typing in the URL or clicking an email link then the Original Search Engine / Search Phrase will not be populated. Due to security and privacy concerns, current search engines no longer pass this informations, but we retain the fields so that leads who had values populated for them previously can retain that information.   .    

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

From the Marketo Email Use Policy:"...You may not send any Unsolicited Email by use or means of the Marketo Service. "Unsolicited Email" is defined as email sent to persons other than: persons with whom you have an existing business relationship, OR (ii) persons who have consented to the receipt of such email, including publishing or providing their email address in a manner from which consent to receive email of the type transmitted may be reasonably implied." The full text of the policy is here: documents.marketo.com/legal/use-policy/ An abuse report is a report that an individual sends to abuse@marketo.com alleging that a Marketo customer sent unsolicited email. There are a number of reasons why someone might report abuse. Here are a few common reasons people report abuse to us: The person forgot they opted-in to the mailingThe person received genuinely unsolicited emailThe person opted in, but the branding in the email was different than the branding on the opt in form so it

By default, required fields on Marketo forms show a red asterisk to indicate that they're required. Here's how you can remove or change it.   Please ensure that you have access to an experienced Web developer. Marketo Technical Support is not set up to assist with troubleshooting code. Removing the asterisk The following CSS will remove the asterisk from your code. You can add this to one landing page by dragging in a Custom HTML element and pasting this in, or you can add it to your landing page template so it affects all your forms. <style type="text/css">  form.lpeRegForm li.mktFormReq label {    background: none !important;  }</style >   Changing the asterisk To change the required symbol, you need an image that you'd like to display instead of the asterisk. It needs to be 16x16px, and ideally you should make the background transparent. Create that image, then upload it to Marketo. Get the URL for that image, then add thi

Problem/Issue:You created a new custom field in Salesforce and see that Marketo synced to it successfully the first time. You later decide to change the name and/or type in Salesforce.  After making the change, you checked Marketo to confirm the change, but can no longer find the custom field; or, you find that the field name and type did not change.   Resolution:Once a new field name and type is picked up by Marketo during the first sync, Marketo keeps the original properties.  A manual change is required in Marketo in order to properly sync to the right field/type.         

Question: I have leads that are getting created without providing information for fields which I have made required.   Answer: Marketo's field validation makes use of javascript. Most browsers have javascript enabled by default so this should be fairly rare, but a user could change their settings and turn javascript off. This would allow them to submit a form without providing all the required information.   This situation may also occur if a lead submits the first progressive profiling form and subsequently submits a second form with different questions, while also changing the email address (indicating either a different person using the same PC or the same person with two email addresses). Marketo will generate a new lead record, but it won't include the data captured in the first form. To identify if this is the case, examine the "Fills Out Form" activity and check if there is data submitted from a later progressive profile form. If so, this is likely the caus

  Your Salesforce sync is not working because the password for your Salesforce sync user expired. You may see an error in Marketo saying: "describeSObject failed - The users password has expired, you must call SetPassword before attempting any other API operations." Similar to this:   To resolve this error, you will have to change both your password and security token in Salesforce and then update these credentials in Marketo under Admin -> Salesforce -> Edit Credentials -> update both your password and security token in the 2 boxes illustrated below then press the Save button:     To permanently fix this issue, you will need to change the password policies in Salesforce so that your password never expires in Salesforce. To do this, in Salesforce, go to Setup -> Administration Setup -> Security Controls -> Password Policies -> User passwords expire in -> Never expires -> Save for your "your_sync_user@domain.com" user in Salesfor

Issue: My landing page is showing the wrong title, why is this and how do I fix it?   Solution: When you clone a landing page, the title of the old page carries over to the new one. In order to update the page title please see Edit Landing Page Title and Metadata for detailed instructions.

If your lead page layout is incorrectly formatted because the Original Referrer field is too wide or long, follow these steps to correct it. You'll need administrator rights in your Salesforce account.   The following solution will not work in SFDC Professional Edition because it involves removing a Marketo field from the SFDC page layout. In short, you'll create a new custom field in SFDC, then use a formula field to shorten the Original Referrer field instead of the original standard Marketo field. Click on SetupUnder App Setup, click on Leads, click on FieldsClick on New to create a new custom fieldUnder Data Type: select Formula and click on NextEnter Field label and name (perhaps call it "Original_Referrer_c")Under Formula Return Type, select Text and click on NextClick on Advance Formula TabEnter the following bold text into the large text box: HYPERLINK(mkto71__Original_Referrer__c,LEFT( mkto71__Original_Referrer__c , 140))   Note: The above formula takes the f

Due to the way Excel handles CSV files with unicode data, you may need to follow these steps for importing the file into Marketo as UTF-8 data: Set up your Excel spreadsheet properly for your import (for example, removing unnecessary columns)Select all the data in the spreadsheet. Copy it to the clipboard (control-c in Windows, command-c in OS X)Paste the data into a text editor -- Notepad in Windows, TextEdit in OS XSave the file. In the "Save As" dialog, pick the UTF-8 option in the Encoding section at the bottom of the dialog In TextEdit, set the file to text only using Format -> Make Plain Text before pasting Save the file. In the "Save As" dialog, pick the UTF-8 option in the Encoding section at the bottom of the dialogImport the file into Marketo as a "Tab-separated values" file Your unicode characters should import correctly.

  Marketo Champions are customers who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the Marketo Community, are experts in Marketo products, are avid contributors in the social world, and are loyal advocates of the Marketo brand.Benefits and perks our Champions receive include:   Access: Meetings with our product and marketing teams to give exclusive feedbackPreviews: Given early previews to products, features, and releases when availablePublicity: Exclusive speaking opportunities at our annual Marketo Summit and other eventsNetworking: Special networking events with Marketo executives and fellow Champions and semi-annual conference callsOwnership: Ownership of content and exclusive activities at our annual Marketo Summit that showcase your expertise and thought leadershipCredibility: Special Champion badge on Marketo Community profiles, and profiled on Marketo's corporate websiteSweet Swag: Champion-exclusive swag To find out more information and apply, click here.To vi

Technically, you cannot move records backwards in a progression status.  The only so called “backward” status that you can change the record to is a progression status of “Not In Program”; however, doing this removes them from the membership of the program.  If you do this procedure, this will allow you to re-add them with a different status.   We mentioned technically this cannot be done but logically, there is another method that allows you to juggle the record’s progression status but in a more lateral movement with what appears to be in a “backward” state.  This is all dependent on how you have your channel steps configured.  To access your channel steps, please do the following:   Choose AdminChoose TagsClick the + next to ChannelLocate the channel you wish to configure and highlight itClick the drop-down menu towards the top of Tag Actions, and select Edit   You should now see a pop-up window that allows you to configure the status steps

Marketo recommends keeping the FT (First Touch) and MT (Multi-Touch) in separate reports .   Though they are attribution metrics, FT and MT use different measures to derive pipeline and revenue attribution.  One should not try to compare FT and MT metrics and having them in the same reports may cause confusion.   Step 1:  In RCE, Program Opportunity Analysis, identify the Program and Opportunity of interest.  If verifying FT, pull in relevant FT metrics. Ditto for MT.Also pull in Opportunity Closed and Opportunity Stage.  The combination will tell you if the status of opportunity (open, won, lost)  - which does affect attribution.   Step 2:  For the opportunity, find out the lead(s) associated to that opportunity and opportunity create/close date, status information. One way is to get this information is to do so in SFDC.  In SFDC, search for that Opportunity and scroll down to the Contact Role section to identify the

If you didn't "Grant access to all users” for “Choose security level” during the install of Marketo Sales Insight please follow the steps below.   1.  Grant access to all visualforce pages in the package to all required user profiles. 2.  Login to Salesforce 3.  Navigate to setup->develop->pages. 4. Click on security next to the required visualforce page that have mkto_si   Your users should now be able to access Marketo Sales Insight.

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

  Marketo calls direct complaints received from email recipient Abuse Reports.  For more information about Abuse Reports review the links below: Why do people report abuse? What Is the Difference between an Abuse Report and a Feedback Loop Complaint? Abuse Reports: What They Are and How to Avoid Them   For additional articles reviewing compliance concerns refer to the articles below: What is a Blocklist? Feedback Loops (FBL) Finding Leads that are Auto Unsubscribed for Email Spam Complaints / Feedback Loop (FBL)  

In order to improve our targeting abilities, once a known lead has visited your website, we will override their company name by using their email domain. This way, even if the visitor is not currently at the office, but visiting your website from their house, instead of appearing as an ISP (Comcast Cables / AT&T..) they will appear as coming from the company associated with the email domain they used. For example, someone is known in Marketo Lead Database as 'john.doe@example.com' – once they have visited your website, they will show up as coming from Example Corp even if they are not currently at the office.   IP based geo-location targeting has a 95% accuracy rates for country level and around 85% for states which is why you may sometime see discrepancies. Location identification is not 100%, especially with ISP’s. Given this information, the visitors might be at their home using an IP that is registered as in the wrong city and sometime even state. On