How to apply a calendar event .ics link to an image within an email

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have created a calendar file token to add a calendar event (.ics) link to my Marketo email. This appear as text but how can I apply this feature to an image?

Caroline

[Jenn_DiMaria2]

Honestly, I've been debating switching to AddThisEvent for my Save the Dates.

You can track clicks to the link and it makes it mind-numbingly easy to not only apply the link to whatever (an image), but also allows the end user to add the calendar event to their desired software. I, for one, am tired of vendors sending me .ics files and needing to upload them individually to my company's Google calendar.

The only downside is you can't add tokens to the calendar invite. Depending on the type of event you're hosting, this may or may not be a big deal (it isn't always for me).

[Anonymous]

Is there any hope that this will get fixed?

[Dan_Stevens_]

Each time someone's clicks on the calendar invite, the click action will be tied to your lead record.  And if you were sending them to a website (vs. downloading the .ics file), the user may then be cookied as you.  So while there is no major harm in doing this for this specific use case, I would never recommend using any identifiable link that isn't attributed to that specific lead.  In fact, it's probably causing more overhead on the Marketo side since Marketo is now creating an additional tracking link from the initial tracking link you're providing.

[Anonymous]

Understood but is the approach not a good one to turn to because you can't report off of it or a lead's activity log will show that a lead downloaded "Derrick's ics file" and not a unique ics file?

I'm just trying to get a sense of why I shouldn't use this method because I've been able to insert the ics URL (from the URL) in emails and have others successfully add to their calendars. 

[Dan_Stevens_]

Yes, that URL is specific to you.  Thus the reason why this approach no longer works.

[Anonymous]

I send it to myself from a mkto "send sample" to my outlook email address and I grab the URL from my browser. The URL is a tracking link, but does that cause any harm? If you and I clicked on my ics file (mkto tracking link), and we both looked at our activity logs would this point to the same destination?

[Dan_Stevens_]

So you're saying the URL you copied from within the browser (assuming you're sending this to a web-based email address (like Gmail) and opening it with the web-based email client) and the URL was not a Marketo tracking URL?  If so, not sure how that's happening when all links are trackable on my end.

I was using IE 11 here.

[Anonymous]

Dan,

I was copying the URL from the browser and pasting it into my email invite for example. Is this not good practice? 

From your screenshot, which browser do you use? I use Chrome and I only have the option to open the file.
 

[Dan_Stevens_]

Derrick - how are you grabbing the URL from your test/sample email when all URLs are masked with a Marketo tracking URL?

Regarding your second point, when you send yourself a test/sample using the token approach, click on the link and you'll be prompted to either "save" or "open" the .ics file - choose "Save":



Upload this file to Design Studio, grab the URL of this file and apply it to the actionable text within the email.  Send yourself a test and it will work exactly as it does in the first example.

[Keith_Nyberg2 · Accepted solution]

You can just preview an email with the ICS token added to get the non-unique link for use. When viewing the preview you simply hover over the link to see the link which also allows you to "Copy Link Address". So it's annoying, but a viable workaround. Looks like Marketo generates a unique ID for the ICS token which the URL path references in addition to the value added to the "Title" of the token.

Example
https://subdomain.domain.com/rs/XXX-XXX-XXX/#####/[tokentitle].ics 
Where
- XXX-XXX-XXX represents your instances Munchkin ID
- ##### represents the tokens unique ID

I assumed the title was irrelevant but it is required to access the ics file (likely as an extra security measure so people with one event invite can't just guess ID's to see every event).

[Chrissy_Nemeth1]

This is the way that I would do it. You can even store the calendar link in a token (no https://) if you want to easily add it to multiple emails within an event program, or use the link in the text version of your email. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Nice one, Keith!

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan,

I use the method you first mention - send yourself a sample email, copy the URL of the calendar event and paste that URL onto your image and that seems to work fine. Is this not a viable option anymore?

Also, I tried your workaround by sending myself a sample email with the ICS file, but I can only open it and don't have the ability to save it. How are you able to do this? 

Thanks,
Derrick

[Dan_Stevens_]

Prior to last May's update, you could simply send yourself a sample email, copy the URL of the calendar event and paste that URL onto your image.  But since Marketo includes tracking URLs even with sample/test emails, this is no longer possible.  A workaround would be to save the calendar event (.ics file) from the sample email (click on it and you should be prompted to either open/save it), upload it to to to the images/files folder in design studio and provide a link to this file (thanks to Dory Viscogliosi for this suggestion).

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Haha Dan Stevens​ I was just reading this thinking that I use that same method

[Josh_Hill13]

You cannot right now because the token appears as the Link text you selected in the token setup.