Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

I have no background as a developer, but I am in charge of my company's email program. I have a moderate amount of html, css, and javascript knowledge (self taught on the fly) and I am struggling with Marketo.

My company used to use MailChimp. Building emails was so easy: just drag and drop the type of block you want, the amount of columns, etc. Now in Marketo, it all has to be built by html coding. We've been with Marketo about a year and I have built out one pretty decent template, but now we are stuck using this template for every single email. Marketo is obviously a far superior platform, so why is little MailChimp beating them in actually building the emails?

We don't have a developer on hand and it isn't feasible for us to hire one. It just seems off to me that MailChimp, which cost a fraction of Marketo, was much more user friendly and let me build all types of customized emails in a snap.

Is anyone else struggling with this?

6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

I have heard that a new versions of the email editor is on the way so this should be cleared up soon

Frank_Breen2
Level 10

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

This is definitely a draw back of Marketo, I actually based my Marketo Templates on the MailChimp Templates. Marketo doesn't really have the drag and drop facility on the Email side of thing, but how I go around that was I created my different layouts using Snippets and Tokens. My starting template has 3 key blank area's:

  1. Header
  2. Main Body
  3. Footer

I then have my actual layout within the Snippet, i.e. if I want a Co Branded Header, I have a Snippet that has a pre designed Co Branded Header. One big thing to note about Snippets is that you can't edit the content within the Snippet when it's in the email, this can only be done via the tokens. My Co Branded Header Snippet would have the following tokens then for example:

{{my.Company Logo}}

{{my.Partner Logo}}

You may need to nest your <tables> a bit more doing it this way, but it all works in the end.

My Main Body would look something like this

{{my.Main Body}}

Now this is where the power of Snippets comes in, say your team wants to change the Main Body to a 2 column layout, all you have to do is delete the Main Body Snippet from within the Email then replace it with a 2 Column Snippet, which would look like this:

{{my.Left Column}}

{{my.Right Column}}

When you understand Snippets and use them correctly, it really opens up Marketo and makes it a super powerful tool.

More about Snipptes here - Add a Snippet to an Email - Marketo Docs - Product Docs.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

Consider using knak.io or getting a freelance designer. You don't need them full time.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

Josh, I just looked at knack.io. We didn't get to go to summit so I had never heard of them before. This looks like the best solution for us, as it requires pretty much no html knowledge and is relatively low priced. Thank you so much for this suggestion!

Grégoire_Miche2
Level 10

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

Hi Caroline,

Look at all the items listed here

Indeed, Justin Cooperman​ commented in this post about a new email template system for H1 2016, but we do not know more at this stage

-Greg

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Why is it much harder to create emails in Marketo than MailChimp?

Hi Caroline,

On Launchpoint website you can find the Marketo partners that provide solutions for creating email templates faster.

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