Add a test ?mkt_tok to likes with the marketo token on them

[Anonymous]

Some of my links from partners that I include have errors when the marketo token is added on the live version.

I don't end up seeing this on tests that are sent out but once the live version is sent the errors happen.

I am working on other work around strategies, but ideally the test emails should mirror how a recipient would actually receive something.

If there was a test token on the links with marketo tokens I think the issue would have fewer surprises.

[Anonymous]

Test Email Link

Room Booking

Live Email Link

https://www.mgmgrand.com/en/booking/room-booking.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiuKjLZKXonjHpfsX56OwtWa... 

you have to click on them and see how they expand this is paraphrasing them.

Thank you!

[SanfordWhiteman]

But Ryan, as I explained the other day, these sites are broken in specific ways (their URL parsers are deeply buggy, but only certain characters are misinterpreted). So the idea of a "representative sample" may be unachievable when you're dealing with random hashes.

[Anonymous]

I get what you are saying.. but it still seems weird that consistently tests always work and live always fails. So it seems like the testing token doesn't actually represent the live token. I have never had the test version link fail

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's possible that the current sample-generating algorithm *happens to* not generate %2B but unless both algos are purposely documented and hardened to not generate this character, it's more a coincidence.

I still think it would bad design to skip certain characters that are totally standard on the web because then you're creating fake rules for URLs. It's something that appears in a comment block and makes programmers go "Wat???"

[SanfordWhiteman]

Blogged about this @ http://blog.teknkl.com/big-brands-bad-code/

I wasn't very nice about it. Gotta be in a better mood before my next post.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

So, the resolution for you is to either uncheck the "include mkt_tok" option in the text editor when you're adding a link to these partner sites or if it is in the code, you can just add class="mktNoTok" to the <a> tag, which will do the same thing. This is actually why we built mktNoTok, because we've seen the presence of the mkt_tok break certain external sites.

That said, I don't understand at all why the samples would always work and the live emails always fail...I'm going to have an engineer take a look and see if they can figure out what's different about the two.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Justin, read my blog post and it'll be clear.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

tl;dr (I actually did read it, though) - they aren't handling encoded query string characters correctly?

[SanfordWhiteman]

%2B in particular... not %2F, for a counterexample, but certainly there could be more that break. That's why I think it's a slippery slope for Mkto to start exempting perfectly valid characters. You'd never be sure when to stop.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hey Ryan, strangely enough a workaround for such broken URL parsers just came to me. Would these partners add a tiny JS snippet to adapt Munchkin for this scenario?