Yes, Marketo can indeed tell you when an email has bounced. It has comprehensive email deliverability features that track and report on email bounces, giving you insight into the effectiveness of your email campaigns.
Defining Email Bounces
An email bounce occurs when an email you’ve sent can’t be delivered to the recipient’s mailbox. This could be due to various reasons, such as the recipient’s email address being incorrect (hard bounce) or their mailbox being full (soft bounce).
Marketo’s Approach to Email Bounces
Marketo classifies bounced emails into two categories:
- Hard Bounces: These are permanent delivery failures usually caused by invalid or non-existent email addresses. If an email hard bounces, Marketo marks the associated lead as “Email Invalid” and will not attempt to send further emails to that address.
- Soft Bounces: These are temporary delivery failures, often due to a full inbox or a temporarily unavailable email server. Marketo will continue to attempt delivery for soft bounces until it succeeds or the bounce becomes a hard bounce.
Tracking Email Bounces in Marketo
Here’s how Marketo informs you about email bounces:
- Email Performance Report: This report provides a summary of the performance of your email campaigns, including the number of delivered emails, opened emails, clicked emails, and bounced emails.
- Lead Details: You can view the details of a specific lead to see if any emails sent to them have bounced. The “Email Bounced” field in the lead’s activity log will show if an email has bounced, the type of bounce, and the reason for the bounce.
- Smart Lists: Marketo allows you to create Smart Lists to filter leads based on various criteria, including email bounce data. For instance, you can create a Smart List of all leads with a “hard bounce” status to clean up your email list.
Utilizing Marketo’s Email Bounce Data
Email bounce data is crucial for maintaining the health of your email list and the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Here’s why:
- List Cleaning: By identifying and removing invalid email addresses that cause hard bounces, you can keep your email list clean and improve your email deliverability rate.
- Reputation Management: A high bounce rate can harm your sender reputation, which may lead to your emails being marked as spam. By managing your bounce rate, you can protect your sender reputation.
- Campaign Optimization: By understanding the reasons for email bounces, you can take steps to optimize your email campaigns. For instance, if you notice a high rate of soft bounces due to full inboxes, you might consider sending your emails at a different time.
In conclusion, Marketo provides comprehensive tools to track and report on email bounces, allowing you to optimize your email marketing strategy and maintain a healthy email list.
