Outlook ignores inline style of links from tokens

[Elin_Pedersen]

I have several emails with email addresses and other links applied via tokens. I've wrapped these tokens in span tags with inline styling, to ensure the link looks similar to other links in my email. However, this style is not carried over to outlook (2016). It looks good on web and mobile clients, but not in my outlook desktop client. Does anyone know how to make inline styling of tokens work in outlook as well?

[Anonymous]

Have you tried hardcoded inline styles to ensure that it is the token giving issues and not just your style. Would also need to see the markup of your tokens that are giving issues.

[Kim_Allen]

Hi Elin,

I agree with Tony about testing the hardcoding to see if the styling is the issue. I'd also try to sway you to using links hardcoded instead of within tokens. Don't get me wrong, I am all about using tokens! However, you can't track clicks on tokens like you can with hardcoded links. So your performance reports and program membership (if tracking clicks) will be very low/skewed.

Kim

[SanfordWhiteman]

However, you can't track clicks on tokens like you can with hardcoded links.

Sure you can!  Someone has told you wrong. Tokenized links, even those emitted from Velocity tokens, are click-tracked.

[Elin_Pedersen]

Thanks for your replies. However, in this particular case, I cannot hard code the links since I use this token to populate the email address of account owners. And the other link scenario I mention is for adding a unique webinar access link,  passed in from our event provider. So hard coding is simply not an option for either of these. Besides, these are not links I want to track, so not a concern.

This is how the styled token looks like in my email html:

<span style="color: #0d85c7; text-decoration: underline;">{{company.Account Owner Email Address:default=xxx@xxx.com}} </span>

I use this method for other tokens without problems, but as soon as it’s a link to a page or email address, this issue occur in outlook. Any ideas out there why this happens and how to fix it? I tried MKTO support but they are just telling me to contact a developer, so not really helpful.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Outlook might not be inheriting the style of the span for the anchor. Keep your span as is but inside of it create and style the anchor you want, or try just the anchor without the span.

<span style="color: #0d85c7; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="mailto:{{company.Account Owner Email Address:default=xxx@xxx.com}}" style="color: #0d85c7; text-decoration: underline;">{{company.Account Owner Email Address:default=xxx@xxx.com}}</a></span>

[SanfordWhiteman]

these are not links I want to track, so not a concern.

Tracking is actually very much a concern with mailto: links, just not in the way you think.

When embedded correctly with the protocol (mailto:, http:, https:) hard-coded outside of the token as in Tony's example, token-based links will be tracked.  (I don't know where Kim got another impression.) But this is a bad thing, since mailto: links will not be functional if they are tracked. See http://blog.teknkl.com/stop-trying-to-track-mailto-links-if-you-want-them-to-work/

[Anonymous]

Never knew about that about tracked mailto links, good stuff.

[Elin_Pedersen]

Thank you both! I applied Tony's fix, and set the link not to track as per Sanford's recommendation, and testing shows that it works fine. Much appreciated your help here.