Relationship between a Marketo landing page template and a landing page using that template

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Hello! In the past, when I make a change in a Marketo landing page template, that change was automatically transferred to the landing pagings using that template. I noticed this function stopped recently (the changes in the template are not transferring to landing pages using that template) and I'd like to know how I can make them sync like used to. Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you!

[Dave_Roberts]

Hey Makiko-

If the content that you are changing (the copyright) is inside an editable area on the template changes made to the template will not be reflected on approved Landing Pages. Im pretty sure you can update the template and it'll push to the LPs as long as you haven't approved them (the LPs) yet. Once approved, any changes that occur within an editable area at the template-level are not transferred to replace content inside an editable area on the LPs (which is already approved).

If the content you are editing is not inside an editable area, this might be a glitch - any chance you could post a link to one of your LPs so I can have a look at the code there?

If your content IS inside an editable area and that's the source of the issue here, there's still a way out.

1) From the template editor, you'll want to remove the editable area syntax from the footer (class="mktoText", etc). I can help to identify these if you can provide a link to one of the pages.

2) Approve your template. This will kick all your LPs into draft mode and once re-approved, they'll contain a footer section which is no longer editable.

3) Update your footer copyright on the template and save.

4) Reapprove your LPs to view the update.

I'd be sure to test something like this out to make sure you don't lose or duplicate anything in the process, but I've had success with this type of solution in the past.

[Danny_Tran5]

Hi Dave Roberts,

I'm not trying to hijack Makiko's post, but I've noticed some strange behavior with the landing page templates and how edits made to them don't reflect within re-approved pages within the Marketing Activities section.

For instance, if I change the year of this area from 2018 to 2019

                <div class="col-md-6 pull-left" >
                    <div id="link-footer" class="mktoText" mktoName="Footer copyright">
                        <p style="font-size: 14px;" class="copyright"><a href="https://www.chargepoint.com/legal/">Legal</a> | <a href="https://www.chargepoint.com/privacy/">Privacy Policy</a></p>
                      <p style="font-size: 14px;" >Copyright © 2019 ChargePoint, Inc. All rights reserved.</p>
                    </div>
                </div>

and then re-approve landing pages utilizing this template. The year will still show as 2018.

However if I make this minor adjustment to the id of the parent div tag

                <div class="col-md-6 pull-left" >
                    <div id="link-footerv2" class="mktoText" mktoName="Footer copyright">
                        <p style="font-size: 14px;" class="copyright"><a href="https://www.chargepoint.com/legal/">Legal</a> | <a href="https://www.chargepoint.com/privacy/">Privacy Policy</a></p>
                      <p style="font-size: 14px;" >Copyright © 2019 ChargePoint, Inc. All rights reserved.</p>
                    </div>
                </div>

add a seeming pointless "v2" to the "link-footer" id. It will update the year value in the re-approved pages.

I've checked the style sheets and there's nothing that should dictate the actual content of the pages.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Dave_Roberts]

Hey Danny-

Changing the ID value of the editable area is another way to 'force' the template update an editable area. Im not exactly sure why this happens, but it suggests that Marketo is using the ID value of the modules to distinguish between a new editable area and an existing one. I haven't run into issue changing the ID value to make an update, so as far as I know this is another way to go about pushing a change to an editable area.

The "Marketo thing" that's going on here is that once a Landing Page is approved, the content inside the editable areas is "remembered" - even when the template changes. This is actually a really good thing b/c otherwise each time you updated the template, it'd pull all the 'default/placeholder' content from your template into your editable areas and you'd have to start over on all your assets (what a nightmare!).

To work around this, sometimes we'll leave the footer area as "non-editable" and that helps to ensure that an update made to the template (footer) is pushed to all the pages as soon as they're reapproved. A better way to go about this (in my opinion) is to use a snippet for the header and footer instead of an editable area. You could accomplish this by changing the class="mktoText" to class="mktoSnippet" on your element w/ id="link-footerv2" (or maybe the entire footer since this looks like one column -- I'll usually make the entire section (footer) a snippet. You can then grab all the html that's inside your editable area (or footer) and dump that into a Snippet. The downside of this approach is that a snippet will look the same on every page it's used on, so you if you need a different footer, you'd need to clone the snippet and make changes to the new snippet. Otherwise, snippets are a one-to-many element that will allow you to make an update in one place (the snippet) and once you've reapproved the snippet, it'll push instantly (without add'l approvals to the LPs) into all the LPs that are using it. It's really great for updating copyright years.

Another way that I've seen this handled is to use tokens and set them on a high-level folder inside of Marketing Activities so it'll cascade down thru all your programs/assets. Then, you can get rid of the editable area all together and use a token instead.

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Danny, thank you for posting the additional question!

Dave,

I did ask the question at last year's Marketo summit and I found out that the issue was exactly what you pointed out above, I made the updates inside an editable area on the template. I ended up updating the landing page one by one. We are updating our landing page template this year and I'll make sure to incorporate what you suggested above. Thank you for your feedback!

[Danny_Tran5]

Dave this is very insightful. I really appreciate the info and suggestions here. Now that you've confirmed that editable areas don't update without the workaround, I'll stop procrastinating on using a smarter solution like snippets/tokens.

Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Hello! In the past, when I make a change in a Marketo landing page template, that change was automatically transferred to the landing pagings using that template.

Not without reapproving the derived LP, though.

What changes are you making? Certain changes to $mktoVariables may be in conflict with LP-level settings, but other than that it should work as you expect.

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Sanford Whiteman , thank you for your feedback! We removed one of the social media icons from the footer of the landing page template. There are 180 landing pages associated with this template and after I made the change to the footer, I did the "select all approve" in the Design Studio landing page section. Then I realized the change is not syncing to each landing page. I can still see the social media icon that I removed from the template.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Approve one individually... Same outcome?

[Makiko_Hultz1]

I haven't tried that yet. But that would be a pain to go through 180 pages one by one... I will test it and see if the one-by-one approach will work. If it does, I have no choice Thank you for your feedback!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Makiko,

Are you sure that the icon is not in fact controlled by another mechanism such as a snippet ?

-Greg

[Makiko_Hultz1]

Grégoire Michel , no it's not part of a snippet. I changed the copyright information on the footer from 2017 to 2018 on December 31, 2017 and that was transferred from template to associated landing pages without any problem. The social media icon that I want to remove is located in the footer as well but the change is not transferring. The only thing I can think of is the glitch in Marketo. I tried the individual approving process that recommended by Sandord but that didn't work either. I'm at Marketo Summit so I'll ask the question to the support team Thank you!

[Danny_Tran5]

Hi Makiko Hultz​ - Did you ever find a solution to your issue? I'm experiencing something similar and was hoping you could shed some light on the matter. Thanks.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

You are welcome