Marketo Email Templates: Possible to layer editable sections?

[Alexis_D_Alba1]

Hey there, 

I'm curious to see if anyone in the community has an email template with an editable section layered on top of another editable section.

We would like to start adding the title of our newsletters over our hero images, however, we're not sure if this is possible using marketo templates.

Right now in order to do this we have to upload the image with the text as part of the image. This is not ideal for he following reasons:

1. The text on the images is not live; therefore the title is not searchable.

2. If there's a copy change we need to upload a whole new image instead of easily tweaking it in the editor.

Please let me know if anyone has an recommendations/ know if this is possible.

Thanks!
Alexis

[Jeff_Smith3]

Hi Alexis,

You can't lay editable text over an image. If your image, or banner, or whatever is generic enough, then perhaps make a new template with that element included. Then, you can add new text over the top of it with each new landing page you create. Otherwise, you'll need a new graphic created each time. Maybe someone more tech savvy can chime in if there's another workaround, but this is how I've handled it.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Landing pages, yes (and you don't even need a special template to do so - just add the image on one layer, and the text on another); emails, not that I know of​.  Years ago, you could have added the image as a background image to a table cell and enter text into that cell. Now that Outlook uses Word as the rendering engine, that's no longer an option - since background images are no longer supported in table cells.

[Josh_Hill13]

This is best to do with a Page and a set of tokens, assuming you are using the same template in a lot of situations.

The Template itself can place the images and you can use Tokens as placeholders. But the editable element may have to be dropped on top of the image later on because you can really control that at the page child level. I'm not sure of the html DIVs required to do this at the Template level and still make it editable later.

So you could setup tokens for the metas at the Template level, and anything else once you have the child page. Then you put all this in a Program, add the Tokens, add tokens to the Page, then clone the entire Program and adjust the tokens as needed.

So you could, in fact, use a Rich Text token for the Image, then layer on top a Text or Rich Text token layer for the Header Text.

[Alexis_D_Alba1]

thanks! Your suggestion will work with an email template?

[Josh_Hill13]

Sort of. You can embed my tokens, but the layering is not possible.

[Jeff_Smith3]

This is a really good idea...thank you!

[Dan_Stevens_]

Josh Hill , this will only work for landing pages, not emails (I believe). The OP is looking for a solution for emails - which has much more limited options.

[Josh_Hill13]

LOL, yes, that is true. That is for LPs ONLY.

Email Templates as they stand now can use Tokens in the way I described, but the layering will not work. I suggest that you add Tokens for the ALT tag on the header to help with text visibility. I believe most firms use a Header Image with embedded text, ALT tag, and then some sort of Text Sub Header on the design. Up to you though.

i'm not the biggest fan of Email Banner Images in the way you describe. There's a tendency to make them too large for the preview.

[Dan_Stevens_]

Or worse, a single image for the entire email (without any actual text)!