Email on Acid - HTML Eliminating Variables

[michellechopin]

Hi Community Friends,

It seems I'm unintentionally continuing my Friday questions (to be fair, it's likely because this is my close-out day of the week so I catch up on all the things that have come across my desk throughout the days prior 😋). 

We recently implemented Email on Acid because we didn't have a pre-deployment tool and wanted to make sure that our emails were accessible, compatible across multiple browsers/email clients, and not slowing delivery/load times. I've used the tool in a prior company and loved it's ease of use to copy HTML into the tool, run testing, and then copy it back into Marketo, so I recommended it for my team now.

However, I'm currently experiencing an issue where, when I copy the code back into Marketo, all the variables are eliminated and Marketo, therefore, cannot update the email. Here are the steps I take/am seeing:

1. Selected "Download HTML" from the email I wanted to test
2. Pasted it into EoA and ran all my tests, made updates in that tool, and downloaded the modified files
3. Opened the modified HTML, hit View Page Source, copied the HTML, and pasted it back into the Marketo email (under the "Edit Code" option)
4. After hitting "Save" I get this error in Marketo (and can see that these variables are all highlighted throughout the code):
   

I also got the same issue after sending the email to EoA direct from Marketo, and, during troubleshooting with EoA Support, they

suggested I copy the code from the Marketo email, and paste it back in immediately to see what happened - I get the same errors, so they determined it was something to do with the way the HTML is copied out of Marketo.

EoA support told me that nothing in their process has changed as to how HTML is added and exported out of that system and this is how I've done this in the past, with the most recent effort being done in September when we first implemented EoA here - I had no issues copying the HTML back into Marketo. Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Should I be copying AFTER a certain section of code in the Edit Email setting? Again, I've never had to do anything fussy before so it seems odd that would change now, but open to any and all suggestions!

Appreciate your help as always!

Michelle 

[Jo_Pitts1]

@michellechopin ,

when you send an email from Marketo to EOA, it definitely has the variables removed because the email has been 'built' by Marketo and all those variables become resolved to final values during the build process (inspect the received email code in any browser based email client and you'll see that there are no variables present).

When you paste downloaded HTML into EOA, and then look at the page source, it is highly likely EOA has stripped a lot of the variables because it doesn't recognize them.  

I'd advocate for:

1. Altering code in a Marketo email.  Check in in both desktop and mobile previews.
2. Send the email to EOA.  Note any errors/issues
3. Revise the code in Marketo... repeat until all issues are resolved.
4. Paste code back from the working email to your template so the improvements become available to all new emails.

Further to that, to speed things up I have several groups of email clients that I email to within EOA (e.g. Windows Outlook Desktop).  If I am dealing with a very targeted issue, I'll email the specific group to reduce processing time and the amount of stuff I have to wade through.  Once I've resolve the issue I then go back and email to the global list of clients to ensure I haven't broken the email for any other email clients.

Cheers

Jo

[KevinH]

Hi Michelle, 

Maybe this is helpful: 

Haven't used the "Download Html" feature to feed EoA, yet.

I always removed dynamic content from the email and copy-pasted the code directly from the code editor.

Steps: 

Open Email Asset in Editor. 

Remove any dynamic content snippets from module(s). Code Editor will prompt it can't open otherwise. 

Open Code Editor

Select all code in the code editor and copy to EoA. 

Update Code in EoA.

Paste updated code back into Code Editor. 

Save

Place dynamic content snippets back into modules. 

Save and Approve

Never had any issues with EoA breaking emails with the above procedure. 

This would not track any links in the dynamic content, though.

Best Regards, 

Kevin

[michellechopin · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your comments @KevinH and @Jo_Pitts1 !

I fear I didn't explain my issue properly as the challenge I'm having is related to copying the HTML into and out of Marketo/EoA and the variable elements in the code being stripped out when downloading the HTML. I've since discovered that in most of our emails, the downloaded HTML from Marketo automatically strips out the variables and wanted to show what's happening with screenshots for better understanding (on my part more than anything!). 

Using a test email, I selected "Download HTML" and "View Page Source" from the HTML file - the variables all become reference items (assuming that's the appropriate term) vs code that does anything:

Here is what those variables look like in the Marketo editor/email code tab for this same email (I've only screen captured up to the Bottom Spacer Variables because the screenshot would be huge otherwise):

While I can paste the HTML above into EoA without those variables, because it uses that same code to create the modified version that should be pasted back into Marketo, it breaks the email going back into Marketo because said variables have been removed/have nothing to connect to. This happens even if I copy the HTML (above) and paste it immediately back into the Marketo editor (this is why EoA Support noted that this was a Marketo issue not an EoA one).

I'm not sure why this happens but when I add a line break/space after the <head> tag in the code before downloading the HTML, the variables show in the code:

I've been able to copy this entire code into EoA, complete testing, and paste it back into Marketo without it breaking so it seems that we have to look at the code before using it in that tool to check that they show first - given that I've never experienced this before, I'm sure it's something to do with our templates and the way they're coded (but without developer resources, I have no way of investigating this; and also I don't have a way to compare what I did at my previous company).

Finally, the ONLY concern I've had is, when I open the HTML file in my browser (and my colleague tested this too), it comes up green:

It also showed as such in some of the desktop tests: 

I have no idea what this could be as it doesn't show up in ALL of them and doesn't seem to continue through the code when it's pasted back into Marketo (I tested manually on a desktop as well as opening up the View as Web Page link) - if anyone knows what that is related to, I'd love to know!

While the workaround is clunky as heck for this, it seems like we can still get use out of EoA, for which I'm grateful as I find the tool extremely useful for cleaning things up. AND as was suggested before, we will test one email in a program and then copy the modified one for any additional/subsequent emails as a lot of the elements that get modified are copied between emails (images, CTA, links etc.), and we can always change up subject lines in the same test to be sure all are good.

Hopefully this helps anyone else with any challenges using a tool like EoA, and of course, if anyone has any advice on how to do things better, please don't hesitate to let me know 😀

[SanfordWhiteman]

Instead of going straight to Download HTML, go to Edit Code and then choose Code Actions » Download HTML.

I’m able to download everything, including the Marketo-specific <meta> tags, regardless of what kind of whitespace appears in <head> in the template.

[michellechopin]

@SanfordWhiteman I have never thought to do it from here!

However, when I go to do so, nothing happens. I ran Developer Tools while trying to use the Download HTML menu option and there's a LOT of errors with the code, preventing the download from happening - here's a screenshot (apologies for the size - I wanted to fit everything in):

It's probably something to do with our template code vs a Marketo issue/error - I'm pretty sure someone commented at some point that we had a lot of extra/unnecessary code in our templates.

I'm hopeful that someday either I can learn Marketo's template code better or we can get budget to have someone rebuild our templates cleanly for us 🤞

For now, I will have to use the Download HTML from the email editor and perform our clunky workaround - I don't love it but I am happy I can make use of Email on Acid for the time being!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hard to say which of those errors actually relate to your content. If you want to save your entire template (not email) as a file and PM it to me alongside the email HTML, I’ll take a look.

[Jo_Pitts1]

@michellechopin - WOW.. that's exciting :)!!!!

Like @SanfordWhiteman , feel free to send me the template code et al, and I'll take a quick look