Marketo add-to-calendar tokens for webinar

[avaroglu]

Our team hosts webinar on GoTo Webinar which syncs with Marketo, but some users have been having issues when they receiving their webinar registration confirmation email and try to add to their calendar. I've been using the marketo calendar token for ical/outlook and creating a link for gmail using Kalinka - but our conversion rate for live attendees at our webinars has been pretty low ever since we integrated marketo with GTW, whereas in the past the registration was all done on the GTW platform and we had to manually update that info in Marketo. Has anyone else had issues with marketo's calendar tokens or have a solution that's worked for them? 
I don't feel that doing the registration in GTW is a good idea as that seems like back tracking when we do have a marketo/GTW sync working, but I don't want our live attendee numbers to keep slipping and the calendar feature is the only negative feedback I've received. Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Not enough info here. What exactly are the “issues” people are having? Are you trying to send them the {{member.webinar url}} token before it’s actually populated?

[avaroglu]

Hi Sanford,

I've received a screenshot from one of my colleagues who received the webinar confirmation email, and clicked on the add to calendar link, but received an HTTP Status 400 - Bad Request error. When I put in a Support ticket, it was determined this was not a wide-scale issue but encouraged my colleague to try a different device/network and if on a VPN that might not allow full access, something could be blocking the link. 

Similarly, another colleague had to enable a setting on her Mac so the calendar link went to her work Outlook calendar and not her personal calendar. 
So just a few oddities about the add-to-calendar that I wasn't sure if there was a fix for? I've created using Marketo calendar tokens thus far.

[Darshil_Shah1]

@avaroglu, yes, if the user’s default calendar app isn't the one that they don’t use then ics file would open in their default application, until they change the default app to the one they use. Have you considered using Sandy’s Agical.io for this? It’s a web service that fills in all gaps with the Marketo calendar token. Pretty simple, neat, and easy to follow and use.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Similarly, another colleague had to enable a setting on her Mac so the calendar link went to her work Outlook calendar and not her personal calendar.

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Well, like Darshil says, this isn’t an oddity about the ICS file or about Marketo... or really an oddity at all!

File extension/URL associations can always affect the client experience. For example, a PDF might open in Adobe reader vs. the browser, depending on the machine. Nothing you can do to stop that.

The big problem with ICS files is that they’re only (easily) supported by Outlook. So supplying people with multiple links (Outlook, Gmail, iCal, etc.) is the only way out.