How do I get mobile-friendly versions of my email templates?

[Parker_Pearson]

I've been a Marketo Spark client for a couple of years.  (That means my marketing department consists of an army of 1.5 in case anyone thinks I have extra resources laying around to create custom templates! )

My account came with branded email templates.  These look dreadful on any mobile phone.  How do we set up options so that people can actually READ our emails if they happen to access via mobile - and still have them look good & consistent? 

[Anonymous]

Have you used the templates.marketo.com resources? Here are the responsive ones: http://templates.marketo.com/category/responsive-email/

You'll just have to edit colors, images, etc to match your company. 

Fun fact: don't take the template and drop it into dreamweaver, then put it back. It will break and suck. Make sure you take the template and make edits directly in design studio. Learned that the hard way!

Hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

The design studio is helpful, but someone that is extremely proficient in HTML has to do it to make it look the way you want.  These templates aren't as user friendly as they were explained during training.

[Anonymous]

We've created custom HTML templates with media queries to make them look good on alle desktop and mobile email clients by using 1 template.

If the template library from Marketo does not deliver the promiss I recommend getting them custom build. If you got 1 template style and you create one lay-out with it you might get in trouble if you want a extra column or so... So think ahead and also duplicate the template and get more templates with different lay-outs installed.

[Parker_Pearson]

Ladies - thanks for your input!  So are there tutorials on how they work?  Do I have to create two versions of each email and somehow tie them together so it will use which one is the right layout?  I've spent a decent amount of money to Marketo to create the first batch - does this mean that I can't get my existing ones corrected?

Love how Marketo makes things seem so simple in the training... and they are anything but!

[Anonymous]

The previews on how the responsive email templates from the library work are to be found here:
http://templates.marketo.com/category/responsive-email/
Here you can switch preview to a smartphone view to see how it reacts.
Those are all 1 template, if you import them and create an email it should look good on all (mobile) clients.

You don't have to create to emails and tie them together.

If the Marketo templates work correctyl I can't say, it's also about what content you place in the template maybe. I don't know, I think support could help you with that question.

If you want to easily test template you could use litmus, if you test an email here you see all relevant screenshots, example:
https://litmus.com/pub/c41539d/screenshots.

I hope this anwser your questions and helps you, good luck!

[Anonymous]

Email on Acid is great for testing and troubleshooting HTML. 

I make all my emails responsive/mobile compatible, so I don't think you'll need different versions. If you want to use what you have, you should hire or contact someone that knows both HTML and Marketo. There are some great ones out there!