Can Change our Email’s Content dynamically After It’s Opened?

[Srinivasan_Moha]

I just wanted to know whether its possible to change the content dynamically when recipient's opened the email after offers got expired.

Example: We're providing the offers on the specific date range which is Oct 21st, 22nd & 23rd and we sent an email to the larger recipients but recipient opened email on Oct 24th - Is that possible to change the content dynamically to show new offers instead of showing offers got expired?

Can someone help me to find best possible solutions. Appreciate your help. Thanks in advance!

[Jay_Jiang]

Sounds like you want to look into dynamic content. Using Dynamic Content in an Email - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

P.S. the question that makes up the title of your post, to me, is different to what you're asking about in the body of your post.

[Srinivasan_Moha]

Hello Jay Jiang,

Thanks for your response. Now, I entirely change the content based on what I anticipating precisely.

Please help me out to know the best possible solutions to target the same audience with different new offers.

Appreciate your help!!!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

You can create emails that are different from one person to another, but the email content will be created at email sent time, not email open time. After that, what's in the recipient mail box, cannot be changed, per se.

But you could imagine a system where images in the mail would be dynamically generated at the time of the open. in the email itself, images are just URL's, unlike texts. So you would set a URL that is specific for each person and generated the image dynamically when the image is downloaded.

There is no standard mechanism in Marketo that would enable you to do this, though, so the images would have to be generated outside of Marketo. Furthermore, you would have to pay attention to performance, so that the image download time would not be too long. A derivative mechanism would be that the image is not generated but simply chosen from a list of possible images at the time of download. but still, this would have to be done outside of Marketo.

-Greg

[Srinivasan_Moha]

Hello Grégoire Michel,

Thanks for your valuable inputs.

AFAIK we cannot change the content dynamically after email recipient opened but I wanted to know is there any possible way in Marketo to accomplish this?

Appreciate your help!!!

[SanfordWhiteman]

AFAIK we cannot change the content dynamically after email recipient opened but I wanted to know is there any possible way in Marketo to accomplish this?

The only "content" you can change is image content (not the URL of images, since that's part of the email that's already in the Inbox, but the binary image content that's located at the image URL). The underlying image could in theory change over time based on lead characteristics or other factors. However, this would mean you're confining yourself to people who enable images, providing no fallback for the text-only or no-images population. It also, as Greg says, is not something that comes with Marketo so would have to be built/used as a 3rd-party service.

[Michael_Mason]

Your best bet might be to make the email generic with a button that says something along the lines of "Get our latest offers", that drives to a landing page. That way, you can change the landing page with your updated offers, and if anyone clicks thru, they are seeing exactly what you have to offer.

[Jeff_Weiss1]

We are implementing a tool called Moveable Ink, where the images are rendered every time the email is opened so the offer can change or the content you are pushing can change if they have already engaged or if it has expired. This only effects images and not the copy.

[Anonymous]

Hello Srinivasan,

Yes. I've done what you describe using an outside service named "moveable ink". It allowed us to make emails that included dynamic count-down timers for sales or offers that would expire at a time that i specified. I'm no longer working with this business, so I don't have more info (other than it worked for me).

[Michael_Tucker1]

Hi Srinivasan Mohan​,

Greg's right about the email's HTML code is compiled at the time that the send is made. So using dynamic content or a token wouldn't work for what you're describing.

You might be able to do this programmatically the way that Sanford has mentioned, but I'd be wary about how that email will render between the different email clients and where you ultimately host the binary image file. I wonder if this might be resolved by more of a marketing solution than a technical one. Would it be acceptable to send an email offer with a CTA that said "Get the latest deal" (or something to that affect). You could then put the offer expiry dates into tokens on your landing pages which would update on page load.

Admittedly that might not give you the same effect, especially if you're trying to customize content in the subject line before an email is opened. If that's the intended effect that you're looking for then dynamic or tokenized content in the subject line with a recurring batch campaign would be a good place to look.

All of these suggestions can be done using built-in Marketo functionality. Given the premise of the question about people opening up offer emails after the offers have expired, I'd also recommend doing some testing by setting up a control group from this audience and seeing how they behave and whether you can induce them to click the CTA before the corresponding offer expires without the urgency of publishing the expiry date in the email itself.

I hope that helps you. I'd really like to know how this all works out and what solution you chose to implement...

Michael

Marketo User Group Leader

Manufacturing Virtual User Group​