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

[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]

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_]

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

[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_]

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]

Is there any hope that this will get fixed?

[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).