Thumbnails of email modules not showing up?

[Michael_Steinho]

I had a developer generate an html email for a client. This was the second version of the email as the previous one had a minor change. Then the client added the code into marketo for the email. But none of the module thumbnails show up? With the previous version the thumbnails didn’t show up either right away? It was like days later I went into the system to look around to see if I could find info on this and nothing? Then all of a sudden, days later, without doing anything, they thumbnails were suddenly there. Is there anything requites in the code to make the thumbnails generate? Or is it really just a matter of waiting an unreasonably long time for the thumbnails to be generated?

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Sequel Agency,

Just to start off - it'd be great if you could use your name here rather than generic company names. It's nice for everyone to know who they're talking to  (see Community Guidelines )

But to answer your question - no, there's nothing in the code that's required in order to enable thumbnails. Issues with the modules tab (modules not showing, previews not showing, modules not dragging, etc) are something that I have seen happen on occasion, and seems to often be a bug in the approval process that generally resolves with the old "turn it off and on again" - basically, try editing and reapproving the template. 

If that doesn't fix it, I'd try creating a new template asset with the same code, and seeing if you're able to replicate the issue. If the issue replicates, then it might be a side effect of an issue in the code - at that point I'd consider creating a ticket with support.

Hope that helps.

[Michael_Steinho]

Thanks Grace! I really appreciate your response. And sorry about the name! I added this question from my phone using the account that my client set up. Hadn't even realized that's the name they gave my account! 🙂 (I think I updated it now?)

Anyway, since I wrote this this morning, I have duplicated the template and have been trying to add 1 module at a time.

1. I add the first module, save it, make an email with that template and the thumbnail shows up.
2. go back to the template, add in a second module, save it and make a new email and no thumbnails? not even the first one that was working when it was by itself?

It seems that the more complex modules, even though they have the correct class and id applied, do not want to generate thumbnails? At first I thought maybe there was a conflict between the modules, like using the same id for example. But there isn't? The code validates fine.  I am able to add in the header module and the footer module and those generate thumbnails. but they're just image based. Seems like when I add in something that has a text field things start acting odd.

Anyway, perhaps I do need to open a proper support ticket?  

[Grace_Brebner3]

Hey Michael, 

All good, easy mistake to make  

Generally I do find that the more complex a module is, the slower the editor runs and the more likely you are to have issues like this. But I'm a bit nuts and have some quite complex modules - modules with upwards of 6 elements and 15 variables, etc. So might depend on how complex "complex" is for you  

It could be that there's something in the set up of your code that's not broken so much as... sub-optimal. And - I'll be honest - the error validation in the template editor isn't foolproof, unfortunately. It catches most major breaks, but doesn't always pick up those "sub-optimal" issues.

So yeah - I'd be picking through trying to see if there's any commonalities between the modules that aren't displaying - like your suspicion around the "text field" (not sure whether you're referring to rich text elements or string variables). And definitely would consider opening a ticket with support if you can't whittle down the cause of the issue.

[Michael_Steinho]

I FIGURED IT OUT!! 

It took me all day but I finally figured out what was causing this!

I combed through a number of working templates code and couldn’t find a thing “different” but I was focused on marketo specific things. Then finally I just figured I’d go line by line to see what was different between each module in just the html aspect. It was the font declaration. The developer used short-hand for weight, size, line-height and family. I converted that to long hand declarations and everything works!

All thumbnails, and even the template thumbnail, are showing perfectly! 

[Michael_Steinho]

Actually, after even more digging, I found out that wasn't the problem at all really. Though it is related to fonts. Seems that the shorthand has no problems in Marketo. What the problem is, is using a custom font. Once I accidentally added a space in the @font-face style in the head tag, the thumbnails started working correctly! But, the font's no longer worked, the defaulted to their fallbacks. but when I removed that space, the fonts work correctly, but the thumbnails are all gone.

So, I'm not sure if this is a Marketo limitation or maybe the @font-face style and or source is incorrect?

[Grace_Brebner3]

Good digging

Definitely not a limitation of Marketo; I personally use font-face references. It's possible that there is an error in there somewhere that's throwing the system off.

But worth noting just in case you're not aware - custom fonts themselves do have limitations in email (not in Marketo specifically). Plenty of good resources about this online: like The Ultimate Guide to Web Fonts in Email - Litmus. Generally a good idea to make sure your custom font is a web font, if you can. The Litmus doc gives some really good guides on the best ways to safely load them, might help if that's the root cause of your issue.