'Add to calendar' link

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Does anyone have a good solution for a "add to calendar" link in emails? Something that works both for google calendar and other calendars would be good!

Thanks in advance!

[Josh_Hill13]

If you use the Calendar ICS My Token in a Program, that should work for everyone.

Otherwise you will have to construct the ICS file and upload it to Marketo. I believe there are some ICS tutorials on the web. It's not hard to do.

[Mel_Dadoly]

Like Josh said, the ICS calendar token should work for most email clients. Here's how to make one in Marketo:

Create a Calendar Event (.ics) File - Marketo Docs - Product Docs

Is there an email client this isn't working with?

[Anonymous]

ICS tokens are not practical for Google Calendar users.

[Lucho_Soto]

It also doesn't work for iPhone users who have the Gmail and Chrome apps. The ics file will not work properly if opened in Chrome for iOS.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yeah, much as it pains me to say it, iCalendar/ICS objects work much better as attachments. In every other way, attachments are pernicious, and there's no particular reason that remotely fetching the ICS file should be any different from having it inline, but calendaring clients have been built to expect attachments.

Just wondering: have you tested with an untracked ICS file to control for that?

[Lucho_Soto]

In our case, we upload the ICS file to the design studio, gives us better control of what we want the link to look like. I tried turning off link tracking for the calendar file URL and the results were interesting.

If the link opens in safari, it will automatically ask if you want to add it to the iOS calendar app (with link tracking on, it takes a little longer but still works).

It still doesn't work at all on iOS Chrome. Even after hitting "download" and then "open in", there was no option to add the .ics file to any calendar, iOS or Google. I then downloaded the Google Calendar app but that did not show up as an option when I tried "open in" in iOS Chrome again.

In short, it looks like iOS Chrome hates .ics files.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Thanks for the updates! Google internally is not iCalendar-friendly (that's why you need a different link structure for Add to Google Calendar)... wonder if we could get it to flip over to iOS Calendar with caldav:// or another handler. So many permutations to try.

[Eric_Salamon1]

I had the same issue. The thing I found was Addevent its a free calendar file creator, but it would require you to put in 2 buttons, one for google, and one for Apple/Outlook.

[Anonymous]

Eventable is another tool you can use. One "Add to Calendar" button works with all calendar types. It's free. https://add.eventable.com/free-add-to-calendar-button