With Marketo’s new email editor (which we love btw) they have also released some new email starter templates along with it. While there are some nice modern designs in these starter templates, we ran them through Litmus and there were some pretty concerning results.
These templates are not coded using the fluid hybrid method, which means they are not responsive in Outlook or Gmail. There are some pretty major rendering problems on Outlook and Gmail since they use media queries. For more on the importance on fluid hybrid email design, refresh yourself in our blog post: Your ‘responsive’ emails actually aren’t.
What does this mean for you? Well when you think you might be sending this:
Your recipients (in this case in Outlook 2010) would actually be seeing this:
It looks as though Marketo has downloaded these templates down from a vendor called ‘MailSalad’ for $15/each. You can see the original templates here: https://www.mailsalad.com/responsive-email-templates/
Here are the public Litmus Test Result links for the current Marketo Starter Templates in case you’d like to take a look yourself:
Iceberg
https://litmus.com/pub/fec6f9e
Urbanista
https://litmus.com/pub/3f2d30d
Breaking News
https://litmus.com/pub/49ae570
Good News
https://litmus.com/pub/a86b138
Sophia
https://litmus.com/pub/74a8a87
Limón
https://litmus.com/pub/996eb8b
Homegrown
https://litmus.com/pub/fec68b1
Flatiron
https://litmus.com/pub/ab51e91
Slam Dunk
https://litmus.com/pub/3a8281e
Basic
https://litmus.com/pub/7cc8a53
Short & Sweet
https://litmus.com/pub/3a8281e
Save My Spot
https://litmus.com/pub/2820414
Private Jet
https://litmus.com/pub/e0ed61b
The takeaway? We think there is a ton of potential with the new email editor, and keep in mind, these templates have nothing to do with the new editor. However, the starter templates that Marketo is offering fall short of being reliable for your audience given the number of users on Outlook and Gmail. Hopefully, they will get these templates sorted out and release some proper fluid hybrid templates that work with the new editor.
