Email 2.0 Template doesn't update my current email assets

[Justin_Cooperm2]

Luke, it's definitely possible to achieve what you want. Whatever is in your template that is not marked with a Marketo-specific tag (mktoText, mktoImg, etc.) will be baked into the template. If you change it, it will change in all emails that use the template. When you define a section as "editable", however, it now becomes controlled by the Marketo Email Editor (hence "editable" element). Templates don't override editable elements because the information architecture defines those as being email-level sections. The template will control the placeholder contents when a new email is created but there is no connection from that point forward. Marketers would edit their body text or images from that point for each individual template.

I also actually disagree with your comment about modules. The modules defined in the template truly are "template modules" which can, in turn, be added to emails. It is a 1:n relationship...you can add 20 modules of the same type into an email and structure them all completely differently with different contents, formatting, structure, spacing, colors, etc. We do not want to have a template update to a template module overwrite all of that work at the email level. The idea is, marketers may utilize several modules of the same type to build their emails in very custom ways. If you are truly trying to lock down the look-and-feel of the email, why use modules at all? Just build your template with no modules and you'll have full control to overwrite every email in Marketo.

[Erica_Sante]

Hmm, researching similar topic and I'm finding different experiences and opinions of the intended vs. actual outcome of updating an existing email 2.0 template and whether or not the updates carry through to existing, approved assets. And additionally whether it's best to approve or discard the drafts that are generated as a result of a template update. I have recently experienced something similar to what Tyson Jurgens​ described here: https://nation.marketo.com/community/champion/blog/2017/05/08/bulk-approve-landing-pages-in-the-desi...  However, I found your reply above that states this should not be the case. Marketo support has advised that we create net new templates and archive the existing versions to limit any issues caused or draft states of existing email assets - but seems like this defeats purpose of limiting number of templates in your instance? Curious about additional thoughts here.

[Justin_Cooperm2]

Hi Erica,

I took a look at that thread and couldn't immediately understand what the issue was there, but what I'm saying in this thread is definitely the expected behavior. Here's some tips + tricks:

1. In Email 2.0, any contents in the email template within a region marked as an Editable Element will be placeholder contents for NEW emails only. For example, I create a mktoText section in my template with with contents "Hello World", then create an email from the template. "Hello World" will be pre-filled but I can then change it to my liking. No future template updates to that region will overwrite what is in the individual email. Please note that if a template change altered the ID of that element then it would be as if the element was deleted from the template (ID is how we know it is the same region being updated) and individual emails would treat it as a new section, overwriting anything that was done in the region with the previous ID. Also note that this behavior differs from the deprecated Email 1.0, where template updates to editable sections will overwrite those sections in individual emails.
2. In Email 2.0, no Marketo editable element, variable, or module should be overwritten in an existing email by template changes. If you change a module, those changes will be reflected if you drag in a new one to your email. But, the existing contents of the email should not be overwritten. Once you insert and arrange your modules in an email, for user confidence reasons we want that content to remain as-is. Because each module will be highly customized at the email-level, allowing template changes to propagate to the modules already within an email would be very destructive.
3. It is possible to add elements to an email. In this case, it will just appear as a new editable element in all emails that use that template.
4. Changes made in the template outside of any Marketo editable element, variable, or module/container should always propagate to all individual emails that use that template. The user can't edit that content at the email level anyway, so there is no risk to overwriting this content.
5. When you make template changes and approve the template, it will put all existing emails using the template in draft state. The approved version is not changed but the draft will reflect the changes made.
6. The default contents of the TEXT version of an email is generated automatically by Marketo by copying the text within any "Rich Text" editable element in the order they come in the HTML code. No other contents are automatically copied into the TEXT version and users must manually tweak the TEXT contents to ensure it's as they wish. It is not possible to control the TEXT version from the email template, other than changing the placeholder contents of the "Rich Text" editable elements for new emails.

If you are seeing behavior different from what I describe above, please let me know. Also, feel free to ping me if you have specific questions about something you're seeing.

Justin