Marketo Link Tokens not functioning in emails

[Anonymous]

Hi Marketo Community!

I've recently come across an issue that I'm not entirely sure how to address and wanted to see if anyone has had experience here.

On our blog, we have content that sites behind a form and, upon form fill, we send a thank you email with a link to the PDF.

I've recently had a colleague from our German office mention that people have been emailing him saying that they've filled out the form, received the thank you email, but for some reason, the CTA link inside the thank you email was removed. (see screenshot below of the Thank you email).

I've been digging into this but have had no luck in replicating this issue and therefore haven't been able to triage.  The only thing I could think of was the way we set up the link. We set it up as a token and the link itself looks like this: "https://{{my.ContentURL}}"

The token itself is a PDF that we uploaded into Marketo and looks like this: "mkto.eventbrite.com/rs/269-CEG-133/images/Die_4_Vorteile_der_fr__hen_Event_Ver__ffentlichung.pdf"

If anyone has any context into this it's greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Jake

[SanfordWhiteman]

Without seeing the actual HTML is in that final email, the screenshot doesn't tell us anything. What exactly does the URL being "removed" mean? Is the <a> removed? Is the href changed to a non-working URL?

Anyway, I don't recommend you send direct links to downloadables.  Try a redirector page instead.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sanford,

To clarify, the entire <a> tag is being removed and that's the piece I'm struggling to figure out.

Thanks,

Jake

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you are seeing this with one destination domain (even if it's your own) that sounds like a security measure.  If that same email sent to another recipient looks correct, then that would be my conclusion, as it's a {{my.token}} and isn't lead-specific.

[Anonymous]

Yeah that's what I was thinking. There was something happening on the

recipients' side that was actively stripping out that link. Do you know of

a way to circumvent that?

Thanks,

Jake

On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 10:49 AM, Sanford Whiteman <

[SanfordWhiteman]

I should hope there would be no way of circumventing it entirely: if their intent is to stop leads from receiving clickable links, that must be honored.

You can turn off tracking on the link and see if they still strip it out. If they leave it alone when untracked, that would suggest they are particularly sensitive to Marketo-tracked links. Are you using a branding domain for your tracked links, or the default mkto-aabbbbbb.com?

[Anonymous]

Fair point.  I haven't disabled link tracking before but I think that could be something to try.  In these instances, we only score people based on them clicking the link rather than the specific web page visit.  I'd be curious to see if that fixes it, however, the issue is that I'm not able to replicate this so I won't know if it's working.

Also, we're using the default Marketo domain.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Also, we're using the default Marketo domain.

It's really a good idea to set up a branding domain.

Normally I frown on attempts to circumvent the wishes of the recipient's server, but I consider this a white lie as they can still blacklist your domain if they want to. They just won't hold a domain starting with "mkto-" against you.

[Anonymous]

Gotcha. Thanks for the insight, super helpful!

[Anonymous]

Are you using Dynamic content in this email? If yes, the {{my.link}} token that holds your URL will not work.