Marketo's email editor is obviously terrible

[David_Friedman]

All,

Since Marketo's email editor is obviously terrible...

What other email editors do people use to get anything done?

Thanks,
Dave

[Will_Figueroa]

Yes, beefree.io is and has been the best in this space for a while now imo. It can be used for FREE or you can pay $15/mo if you want to save templates. And Andy is correct, it is the editor that Knack upsells for an extra $250/mo to use with their Marketo integration.

[Andy_Theimer]

Bee free is the way to go... by far the best tool I've used. Pretty sure Knack uses the Bee editor but built a smooth Marketo integration to make life even better for us Marketo users.

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey David,

You might want to be more specific about what you're looking to achieve with the email editor that you're finding you're unable to achieve. You're obviously experiencing issues that are causing a lot of frustration, but if you can share those specific frustrations with us we might be able to help you resolve them to use the editor more effectively.

There's quite a few factors to consider when it comes to a great email editing experience in Marketo - its ability to mould itself to your template is incredibly powerful but can be jarring for those with experience in other platforms where the structure is quite different, and problematic if the template isn't built to suit Marketo's syntax. There's lots of discussion on the community around this topic (see this thread: Re: Do we seriously need to know how to code to create a landing page template?).

Hope that helps.

[David_Friedman]

I have to agree with the sentiment. It's like you have to code in order to do simple things. Example, there are 3 pieces of text and a call to action button on top of an image in a std template. It's rather difficult to remove 1 or 2 of these text blocks. Also, there's no easy image resize option. So, just creating the header image and call to action in the Marketo platform is dramatically more time consuming than other editors in software like Hubspot. Even a simple system like Square Space has an editor that makes this easy. Honestly, the Marketo editor feels like it's 3-5 years behind the times.

[Jay_Jiang]

Have to say that Hubspot's UI and "smooth" UX is 1 up on Marketo.

However, you still need to code Hubspot email templates in the same way Marketo's, when you want a layout in a certain way. In fact Hubspot email templates don't have the modular ability that Marketo emails can have.

So yeah I agree the Marketo email editor's UI and UX isn't great, but functionality it's not 3-5 years behind.

[Karyn_Hill]

We're checking into knak, which has an excellent, flexible drag and drop editor and can be used by our end users who don't know how to code at all. They frequently have to ask me to make a module to do what they want it to do that doesn't already exist. With knak, they can just built it themselves. And it's not all that expensive, all things considered.

[Anthony_Baldman]

We have purchased a subscription to Stripo which has the ability to create emails via a drag and drop editor. Stripo — FREE Email Template Builder: Drag and Drop Html Email Editor

There are 3 levels so we got the yearly level at $250 per year. It helps when you need to create a net new template and don't want to deal with code.

[EBauerCO]

Anthony, how easy was it for you to connect stripo to Marketo? We've used Stripo for quite some time but are new to Marketo. We followed the steps from support articles and can't seem to get the emails to appear in the design studio. 

[jillranee]

are you just downloading the HTML code from Stripo or do you have the direct connection. I am struggling with the direct connection

[Dave_Roberts]

I haven't tested the code from Stipo or any of the other free Email coders but I did just have a look at the Stipo demo and I'd just include a word of warning that you carefully test your code each time you create a new email using these services - there were a few things about the code base in the editor that looked suspect. Since the world of Email Service Providers is a changing landscape, a lot of these tools get antiquated quickly and might not even be optimized for many inboxes in the first place. Services like Litmus or Email on Acid will allow you to test for this kind of stuff to be sure you're getting what you'd expect across the inbox universe. There's a lot of bells and whistles out there that might work in some specific context but are coded for aesthetic "wow factor" in exchange for functionality. Bottom line, buyer beware - always test this stuff because you'll usually end up getting what you've paid for in my experience.

[SanfordWhiteman]

On all these same notes, wish people would test their LPs in, oh, a browser other than their current default. (Particularly in regard to JS, not so much markup/CSS... though there are plenty of examples of the latter as well.)

It's staggering how many LPs contain code that won't run on any version of IE. Some don't even work on Chrome version ({latest} - 2)! Working up a blog post on some egregious examples.

[Karyn_Hill]

I'll check into that. I'm not opposed to saving money!

[Adam_Monago2]

We are recent Knak adopters and very happy with it. It's a bit more of an expense to plan for but actually offers tremendous capability, especially if you're managing multiple brands and business units that need varied levels of control.

[Karyn_Hill]

That's our situation—we have services that are branded in very different ways, and emails need to serve a variety of purposes and be more flexible on the fly. I create any module that anyone asks for or that I can think to add but our users always come up with something different they need. With knak, they'll be able to do it without having to wait for me to create the module first.

And they're hoping to have their landing page editor work the same way by the end of the year. I'm really hoping we go for it.

[Grace_Brebner3]

My comment in that thread I linked to probably provides much the same response I'd have here.

Totally appreciate how frustrating this is for you, the structure of the systems are quite different - personally I would choose Marketo any day for the level of control it gives me that Hubspot doesn't. I've never been able to create emails in Hubspot that were as beautiful or as responsive as the ones I've created in Marketo (but disclaimer; I can code, I know Marketo's syntax fluently, and design my templates to maximise this, and I care ​a lot​ about ensuring my emails display consistently across clients).

I would strongly recommend that you invest in a custom email template that meets your brand and user requirements; there are a number of affordable third parties with pretty comprehensive knowledge of the Marketo syntax who can do this for you if you don't have the internal expertise/resource.

[Bryan_Epstein]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with Email Editor that you are having issues with? Are you trying to add new modules or are you just trying to make basic edits to the emails?

[David_Friedman]

Brian,

See my response below for one example.

We're developing a drip sequence. We wrote text and we're porting this into some of the templates marketo give you. Formatting text was hard. Moving text up or down within a block, especially when there's a background image, seems impossible to do via the editor. Removing some elements seems impossible. When you upload an image, it has to be the perfect pixel ratio. Then, if you change the size of the text on top of the image and length of the text, the image gets distorted.

I imagine if you kept to the exact same parameters - same string lengths. Same size photos, they'd work fine. It's deviating even 25% from these that seems to make things fall of the rails.

My colleague and I both ran into issues - and we are by no means new to email marketing, wysiwyg editors, or the like. Image resizing, trying to remove text from templates, after a few hours, we were considering hiring a full time designer because we'd pretty much not gotten anywhere...

Thanks,

DF

[Stephen_Proven1]

David,

From an email template developer perspective:

The thing about Marketo's Email Editor is it can be as limiting or as flexible as you'd like. It all depends on how much of the Template Syntax is being utilized. With Marketo's Email Template Variables you can create settings for every module of a template that allows a lot of flexibility/functionality.

For example, changing the vertical alignment of text in a banner, you could utilize a drop-down list setting (mktoList variable) on the module that allows you to change it to top, middle, or bottom. Every aspect from changing spacing, font-sizes, colors, background images, swapping columns, it's all possible when you have a fully functional template that is utilizing what Marketo provides for custom templates. Almost anything an experienced email developer can do in email they can find a way to tie it to a variable/module setting.

I find that in Email 2.0 Templates, you can have a ton of flexibility, while locking down the most important code that could cause issues with email client compatibility/rendering.

At the end of the day, the Email Editor experience is solely based on how the template is developed.

Below is an example using a template variable 'mktoList' where there are options for top, middle, and bottom. That variable/setting is then tied into the template's HTML code to change the html style to match that setting, allowing the end user to adjust the vertical alignment between the image and the content on the right without touching the code. More information on the variables is located in the Marketo Docs here: Email Template Syntax - Marketo Docs - Product Documentation

Hopefully this helps clear things up, and most importantly that there may be more room to fully utilize the Marketo Email Editor.

[David_Pitta]

After struggling with these same issues for many years and then trying Knak for a few years.... we were still underwhelmed balancing ease of use, flexibility and consistency. While Knac (and other solutions mentioned) offered a templated approach, we didn't find the flexibility and it was hard to get consistency across the different templates they offered (especially if you wanted to make small changes to the template). Then Stephen built us a single 'flex' template that can accommodate (nearly) endless versions of creating templates for each use case we needed. You can turn on/off elements on the master and save your own templates with ease. No matter how the team wants to 'customize' the look/feel - every email is consistent to the master. The team is happy and are no longer spending hours trying to make an email work as desired. I wish I would have done this years ago.

So I would agree with others... the email editor is only as good as the effort put into designing your templates. And the template needs to be built in a way that allows ease of use, without sacrificing flexibility and consistency.

(This is not our final flex template but a mockup we worked from to design/brand our own)

[Matt_Perkins]

David,

This is an amazing idea. I think subconsciously I'd been beginning to do this, but it's not something I've considered having built to this degree! I'd be interested to know how big a job it was to get the master template built? And how often do you fall back on it vs using your child templates created from it?

[Josh_Hill13]

Creating a giant Master is pretty much the best way to handle this and empower the marketers to select/remove modules.