Is there an issue with designing responsive email templates?

[Anonymous]

A previous designer created our current email templates, which aren't responsive. I know that definition varies - so for the purpose of this thread, I just mean the template/fonts resizes for different screen sizes.

I asked my new designer if she could make our current email templates responsive and she wrote:

"By creating more responsive templates you're going to lose quite a bit of ease that the editor provides. You may want to talk with your Marketo contact about what they see as the pros/cons of a responsive layout and their editor."

Has anyone had issues with this or can elaborate on said pros/cons?

[Anonymous]

It depends a lot on how they do it. In general, for emails I think you can do this without creating a weird experience at all. Have they run into anything in the past they are worried about?

It might be hard to see the small versions, so if there are separate images for the small emails, that might not be very WYSIWG in the editor.

[Anonymous]

We had our designer mock up a couple responsive templates and it was a disaster. The final product email looked nothing like the template once they were sent out in test to Outlook, Yahoo and a couple others. We had him try and tweek them but eventually bagged the idea and just went back to using the regular templates. The responsive templates are just too inconsistent in their appearance from product to product. 

[Anonymous]

You might also want to look at the responsive template samples we have up here: http://templates.marketo.com/category/responsive-email/

And see how those feel to you, in order to get a sense of it.

[Anonymous]

As Erik mentioned, we have a list of responsive email templates that you can directly import into Marketo.

After you have customized these templates, I would recommend using a tool like Litmus, where you see how the email will appear with different screen sizes, operating systems, browsers, and devices. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks all - a little more clarification.

My designer says that creative responsive templates will interfere with the editor, so I'll lose some ease of use if I really want to proceed. Have you found this to be true?

Here's what she wrote:

Responsive templates will interfere with the editor, so I'm not sure you want to do that. You need to talk with your Marketo rep to confirm but that was my understanding of things in talking with Glen. Being able to use the editor is a trade-off for having a responsive template was how I understood things. I think you'd really need to understand how this would affect your use/ease of the editor before moving forward. If you want me to be on the call with you I can do that, just let me know. 

[Anonymous]

It's a bit of a continuum. There are styles of them which should be fine but more advanced versions might make it harder to use the editor. In general? I think if you're comitted to responsive emails, you should do it, and if there are things you'd like Marketo to do differently, post 'em here!