Knowledgebase

  What is the Email API? What is the Email API used for? What is Email 2.0? Does the Email API Work on Email 2.0 Assets? Will the Email API Break when Enabling Email Experience 2.0? How Are 1.0 Assets Upgraded to 2.0 Assets? What to Do When an Email Was Accidentally Converted to Email 2.0 format?     What is the Email API? API stands for Application Programming Interface and the Email API allows an automated process to create and edit emails in Marketo. There are also other API calls that involve emails, such as Approve Snippet (assuming the Snippet is used in an Email) and Clone Program (assuming the Program contains Emails). There are also API calls to create and update Email Templates. Essentially, the API can do many things that you can also do through the Marketo user interface, but then in an automated fashion.     What is the Email API used for? There are many scenarios: an external system could create Emails in Marketo using data that lives outside of Marketo. A translation service provider could clone a master Email, translate it to many languages, then save them back into Marketo as localized Emails. A reporting system could extract Emails from Marketo to use in reports that are generated outside of Marketo. An external system could Clone a Program that contains Emails, then populate the Program Tokens and schedule the Email to be sent out at a specific time. There could be an external email template creation system that creates new Email templates in Marketo through the API.     What is Email 2.0? “Email Experience 2.0” is the new Marketo product feature with the enhanced email editor, documented here: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Email+Editor+v2.0+Overview. It can be switched on in Admin > Email > Edit Email Editor Settings. All Emails and Email Templates also have a version number, either 1.0 (the old version) or 2.0 (the new version). If we refer to “Email 2.0 asset” we mean an email or email template in the new upgraded 2.0 format.     Does the Email API Work on Email 2.0 Assets? Yes.     Will the Email API Break when Enabling Email Experience 2.0? No. Enabling Email 2.0 will not automatically upgrade Emails or Email Templates to the new 2.0 format. The Email API can still create new Emails and Email Templates in the 1.0 format.  However – after enabling Email 2.0 – any Email or Email Template that is created or edited and approved through the Marketo User Interface will automatically be upgraded to the 2.0 format.     How Are 1.0 Assets Upgraded to 2.0 Assets? If you edit an “Approved" or “Approved with Draft” 1.0 Email with Email 2.0 enabled, the draft is converted to the 2.0 format. You can still discard the draft to go back to the approved 1.0 format. Once you approve the email and it becomes 2.0, the Email cannot be converted back to 1.0. If you edit a “Draft” 1.0 Email (never been approved), this will automatically be converted to 2.0 with no option to revert back to the 1.0 format. The same applies to Email Templates.     What to Do When an Email Was Accidentally Converted to Email 2.0 format? If an Email or Email Template was accidentally converted to the 2.0 format, you’d have to copy the asset contents to a text editor, disable Email 2.0, then create a new 1.0 asset using the content that you copied.

Issue A lead has an Unsubscribe activity logged in their activity history, but they continue to receive emails after the Unsubscribe.     Solution An Unsubscribe activity is logged when the lead clicks the system Unsubscribe link embedded in a Marketo email.  However, if that link takes them to a Preference Center that allows them to select from multiple options, they may not choose the full unsubscribe option and may continue to receive selected emails.   To confirm if this is the case, find the Unsubscribe activity in their activity log and double-click on the activity to open it. This will show you the choices they selected in the email preferences form.  In the example below, the lead did not fully unsubscribe, they only chose to unsubscribe from specific content. Since they did not choose the global unsubscribe, they will continue to receive some emails.    

Issue Users for your Marketo instance are unable to log into the instance. Solution Check your landing page URLs and email links. If these are also unavailable, your Marketo instance may have been shut off. Marketo Support can confirm whether your instance has been deactivated, but are not able to reactivate it.  In this situation, please contact your Marketo Account Representative to discuss the status of the instance and regaining access.        

Issue You are experiencing slow processing of campaigns, smart lists, and reports.     Solution There are three key components that can slow down an instance: Number of trigger campaigns: Trigger campaigns are always on, always listening.  If there are 50 campaigns triggering at the same time, all the 50 triggers will be in queue, slowing down your processing and routing inside Marketo. Solution: Reduce the number of Triggers. Convert some of the triggers to batches: Batches also run all the flow steps for every lead at once, instead of serially, which reduces total processing time.   Complexity of smart lists: The more complex a smart list, the harder it is for the system to figure it out, which increases backend processing and even creates campaign failures from timeouts. Solution: Reduce the number of nested smart lists called in a smart list. Whenever you ask Marketo to call another Smart List, it has to wait until all of the other smart lists finish, before putting together the final counts. Instead of Marketo looking for the list and running it, just put the filters in the trigger itself.   Volume of Leads: With regular cleaning and good systems design, it is fairly easy to keep your system running fast. Reduce the number of leads that can flow through with filters. Clean up the inactive leads at regular intervals.    

Issue Reporting on separate links in an email that both point to the same URL Solution When there are duplicate links in an email, the performance of those links will be consolidated into a single row in the Analytics report, so if there are three links that point to the same URL, there will only be a single line for that link on the Performance report. If you would like to differentiate between these duplicates, you can add URL Parameters. Example: www.google.com   and    www.google.com?parameter=second-link In this example, Marketo Link Performance Reporting will show each individual link on Analytics Reporting, but both links will go to the same place.

Issue You are using tracked links in your emails and the mkt_tok tracking token URL parameter is too long for some of your systems.   Solution There is not a way to make the mkt_tok tracking tokens shorter. These tracking tokens must be this length in order to attain uniqueness for each individual Marketo record across all databases of all Marketo Clients.  It is possible to remove the token while keeping the link tracking.  You can do it from the Edit Link window in the email editor. Or you can add a "class="mkt_NoTok" to your HTML to disable it for larger blocks of content.  

Issue How to setup the favicon, aka Favorites Icon for Marketo Landing Pages. Solution Steps to Setting up Favicon 1. Ensure you have the favicon hosted either externally or internally in Marketo. (Don't know how to find the link of a image hosted in Marketo? Check this DOC out) 2. On the Landing Page Settings ensure that option 'Remove default favicon links' is selected. Note that this affects all landing pages globally (scroll down in the settings, it might be hiding) [Related DOC] 3. You can specify the favicon in two ways:    a. Directly on the landing page in the custom HTML Header [Related DOC]    b. In the Landing Page Template's Header 4. This code would need to be specified in the header <link rel="shortcut icon" href="<favicon url>" type="image/x-icon" > <link rel="icon" href="<favicon url>" type="image/x-icon" > 5. Test the landing page out by either opening it in a different browser or clearing the browser cache and restarting the browser.

Issue What is the difference between mktNoTrack and  mktNoTok? Solution Adding the mktNoTrack class to an email link tells Marketo not to add a tracking link to the URL. Without the tracking link, the recipient is not redirected through the tracking server before going to the target URL. Use this when you specifically don't want to track Clicked Link in Email events in the Marketo database. Adding the mktNoTok class to an email link tells Marketo not to add the _mkt_tok parameter to the target link.  Used when the target link does not behave properly, for example, a mailto: link that should not have extraneous URL info or a static file that won't download when there are query parameters. The click activity will still be tracked, but the associated lead info will not be carried onto the page for use in functions such as form prefill.

Issue Links sent to a customer using AppleMail are not rendering properly. Solution This issue is cause when there is no protocol assigned to a link so AppleMail appends applewebdata:// to the beginning of the url instead of HTTP:// or HTTPS:// The work-around for this is to include the protocol in the link. If there's no protocol (e.g. http://) then the rendering engine will insert applewebdata:// as the protocol for any links.     

Issue After updating the Unsubscribe HTML and Text in Admin>Email, newly added tokens may not render as expected. Solution To resolve the behavior, you'll need to do the following after updating the Unsubscribe settings in Admin: 1) Navigate to the various emails within the instance and un-approve them. May require removing references to the email first. 2) Re-approve the emails. 3) Add back any references to the email asset.   Why this needs to be done: When the email asset is approved it goes through a validation process for all the tokens that are used and this includes the global unsubscribe settings. When editing in Admin >Email > Unsubscribe the validity of tokens is not checked upon saving those changes. If a invalid token is added, something like {{lead.nonExistingField}}, no errors are thrown and it'll return that string value. The verification is done when the "approve" email functionality is used on email assets. This steps retrieves valid tokens list used in the email and adds/updates them in a backend table for use/reference. The update to the global unsubscribe settings doesn't cause the stored information to reference the newly changed settings in Admin. To cause that validation process to go through successfully and update the information on the back end, you'll need to un-approve and re-approve the various emails within the instance to use the new global settings.

Issue You put a variable inside an email token and when the email was sent, the variable rendered as text rather than as a link: Example: ${queryParameters} Should expand to: {{my.CertainURLHREF}}?utm_source=${utm-source}&utm_content=${utm-content}&utm_medium=${utm-medium}&utm_campaign=${utm-campaign}&ajs_uid={{lead.Email Address}}&ajs_event=Email%20Clicked With the various tokens populated Instead it expands to this: https://app.fakewebsite.biz/profile/55555555?utm_source=$%7Butm-source%7D&utm_content=$%7Butm-content%7D&utm_medium=$%7Butm-medium%7D&utm_campaign=$%7Butm-campaign%7D&ajs_uid=adam.tow+test@voxmedia.com&ajs_event=Email%20Clicked   Solution Essentially, email template variables are used at design time to make building out an email easier. Tokens are used at send time to make data variable per program without having to edit the asset or lead. Putting email template variables inside tokens won't work for this reason. It is just how the current design works and you will not be able to put email template tokens inside my tokens or lead tokens. Unwrapping variables before you put them within the token will allow them to function properly. This removes the simplicity of the variable, but retains the functionality.

Issue You see a popup that says 'Limited Access' when you attempt to edit or delete an asset in the Design Studio, even though you should have the required permissions/privileges for the workspace it is located in.   Solution When an asset is shared from one workspace to another, only the original copy can be edited or otherwise modified, even if you have permissions for every workspace it appears in. If you attempt to alter the asset inside one of the folders it has been shared to, you will see a popup informing you that you don't have sufficient privileges to do so. To edit the asset, make sure you are working with the original copy of that asset, located within the workspace where it was first created. Who This Solution Applies To People using Workspaces

Issue Email Script Token contains a reference to an email address token but it is not rendering the email address when the email is sent.       Solution The email address token is not inserted correctly and was manually typed. In order for the email address to render, it must be selected from the Lead object field option on the right-column of the token editor and inserted (see: https://docs.marketo.com/download/attachments/1900577/five.png?version=1&modificationDate=1491232683000&api=v2 )     "If you are typing in tokens free-form ensure to check/activate all corresponding tokens in the tree or they will be treated as plain text and won't work." https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Create+an+Email+Script+Token

Issue Issue Description Get the error 'Cannot get email content- Customer does not belong to any POD' when the URL from the 'view as webpage' link is forwarded for review     Solution Issue Resolution This is expected behavior as of the 2019Q1 release. After clicking on the view as webpage link, the mkt_tok value will be removed. Attempts at sharing the URL after this point will fail. The mkt_tok value should not be shared. It uniquely identifies the recipient.  This is a security enhancement.  The preferred method is to use Send Sample to send the email to teammates, or forward the email.

Issue Issue Description "${button-link}" appears on the Email Link Performance report in place of the URL the buttons point to.     Solution Issue Resolution To stop this "${button-link}" from appearing on the reports, edit the text version of the emails to replace the "${button-link}" with the URL the button points to. This occurs because the text version of the email didn't get edited to provide a valid button link. The "${button-link}" value is part of HTML templates and if the setting 'Copy HTML to Text version of email' is checked then those values get copied across. From there, if the text version doesn't get edited or reviewed after that copy over happens, tracked links for "http://${button-link}?mkt_tok=..." will be sent out for those leads that get the text version of the email in place of the URL the button points to. The next question after hearing this solution is often, "If this is just for the text version, who is reading the text version of emails?", and the answer is that it's probably automated link scanners or security software visiting the link and triggering the click to show on reports. 

Issue Issue Description When adding a superscript for items like © or ®, the email editor displays the superscript correctly but when the email is received, a space is added between the descriptive word and the superscript.     Solution Issue Resolution Open the email editor and edit the HTML by clicking on the "<html>" icon. Change your <div> tags to <p> tags in the html code. Send yourself another sample email to confirm the space is removed. Be sure to review these changes with your developer to ensure no unintended changes occur due to this change.

Issue Issue Description After submitting a form on a landing page, the Thank-you page fails to load, or it loads the wrong page.   Solution Issue Resolution The Thank-you page used by the form can be defined in two places, at the Form level and at the Landing Page level. If these two are in conflict, the setting on the Landing Page wins.  To troubleshoot this issue, compare the two Thank-you options and make sure the Landing Page is either set to the correct page, or that it allows the Thank-you to be form-defined.