Turn Images into Email Templates in Seconds (No Coding Required)!

[Ihargreaves]

What if I told you that you could generate a brand-compliant email template in seconds by simply uploading a screenshot? Well, thanks to the latest release in both Marketo Engage and Journey Optimizer B2B Edition, Marketing Ops can do just that. 

Creating and updating branded email templates has always been a critical part of the campaign creation process. Yet, for many marketers, this process has historically been time-consuming and resource-intensive, often requiring manual HTML coding or reliance on agencies and IT teams. These traditional methods not only slow down campaign execution but also consume valuable budget and resources. 

The new Image to Template feature transforms the way Marketing Ops build email templates. Instead of spending hours coding or outsourcing, you can now convert design files, such as screenshots, into brand-compliant, editable HTML templates in seconds. No coding. No waiting. Just instant results.  

With drag-and-drop simplicity and both JPEG & PNG file support, email template generation has never been easier. Picture this: your content team shares a design file for a new campaign email. Normally, you’d send it to IT or an agency and wait days for a coded template. With Image to Template, you simply upload the JPEG/PNG file, apply a Brand Theme (pre-defined design guidelines) and within seconds, you have a fully editable template ready in the new Marketo Engage email designer. 

Why you’ll love it: 

• Drag-and-drop simplicity: intuitive UI for effortless usage 

• JPEG and PNG support: upload common image formats with ease 

• Speed and efficiency: generate templates in seconds, not days 

• Cost savings: eliminate reliance on agencies or IT teams 

• Brand-compliant templates: apply pre-defined brand design guidelines  

To prove just how easy this feature is to use, we put it to the test by drawing a skeleton email on a scrap of paper and uploading a picture of it. The result? A very basic but functioning email template with image and text blocks, and buttons! See for yourself...

This feature is available to all Marketo Engage and Journey Optimizer B2B Edition customers inside the new email designer at no additional cost. Start turning designs into live campaigns today by checking out this demo video below. 

This feature will be available from November 7th 2025. 

[cfitzpatrick-pb]

Very cool feature! Looking forward to trying this out. Is there anything we need to do to enable this in our instance? I'm not seeing the "Convert Image to Template" button.

[Dave_Roberts]

Here's some screenshots from the video provided to "prove" how well the Image > HTML works.
The image on the left is the design file (input)

The image on the right is the HTML file (output)

Maybe it's just me, but I'm noticing that the two look nothing alike. I also notice that the top headline gets split into 2 different editable containers with large gaps between the text AND the 2 paragraphs of similar text in the design come out as different sizes with huge gaps between them in the HTML template. 

The new Image to Template feature transforms the way Marketing Ops build email templates. Instead of spending hours coding or outsourcing, you can now convert design files, such as screenshots, into brand-compliant, editable HTML templates in seconds. No coding. No waiting. Just instant results.

If the intention is for this tool to save time and money in producing brand-compliant, editable HTML templates in seconds it's certainly not even close to anything I'd be comfortable calling "professional". Beyond the obvious issues in the screenshots above, don't forget that render-testing is an important part of email development and from what I've seen of the codebase for this Universal Editor, it's pretty sketchy under the hood. Also, don't forget that when you're working in the editor that "What-You-See-IS-NOT-What-You-Get" in terms of output. This is because of how the tool itself is built to render in things like normalize.css that certainly will not ship alongside your email to your audience's inbox -- said another way, there's extra code in the browser view that makes the editable canvas appear differently that is not included in the final product (output) of the editor tool. 

>> USER BEWARE: Something like "Image > HTML" might sound too good to be true -- and that's because it still is, even with all the AI support and hard-working, smart and talented army of people working on putting something like this together... we're just not quite there yet. You're probably still going to need a developer to fix the issues you create by using this tool and as a developer I can tell you candidly that I'd much rather work on building reliable code in the first place than fixing unreliable code that came from some "Instant Noodle" vibes-based approach to coding. 

Join the conversation here -- if you were to input the image on the left and output the image on the right, do you think that would actually help you compared to what you're doing today to produce emails in Marketo? How many folks out there are savvy enough to turn that image on the right back into the image on the left using the Universal Editor AND make sure that the code is solid and trustable when you send it off for render testing in Outlook and mobile devices?

[Ihargreaves]

@cfitzpatrick-pb you need to have completed the migration to the Adobe Identity Management system to access this feature - please reach out to your Adobe representative if this has not yet been completed.

[Ihargreaves]

@Dave_Roberts Thank you for sharing your detailed feedback, we appreciate your candid observations as they help us improve. You’re absolutely right that the current output isn’t intended to be a “ready-to-ship” email. The goal of the Image to Template feature is to create an editable template from a design image, not a finalised campaign. This gives marketers a strong starting point that’s already aligned with their brand theme styling (after applying design principles using the Brand Themes feature). From there, minimal manual edits - such as adjusting text or swapping images - can make the template deployment ready in minutes, rather than starting from scratch or outsourcing development.We see this as doing 90%+ of the heavy lifting, saving time, effort, and resources while maintaining brand compliance. We’re actively working towards more perfect iteraitions in future releases. Your points about render-testing and code reliability are valid, and we encourage users to continue applying their QA processes before sending.If you’d like, we can share a quick video showing how easily these templates can be refined for production. And if you have further suggestions or examples, we’d love to hear them as your expertise helps us get closer to that “perfect” outcome.

We will be happy to have a call with you should you want to see a demo of this! 

[Ihargreaves]

@cfitzpatrick-pb please reach out to your Adobe representative as you will need to sign the GenAI terms and conditions to have this feature made available. Thanks!