Marketo Email Best Practices

Emails are a key touch point in lead generation and nurturing campaigns; and if you are using a marketing automation tool like Marketo, life becomes much simpler.

Below are best practices, including the dos & don’ts – all combined into one, which we have put together after completing a bunch of successful projects in Marketo.

Value

1. Make Emails Simple
   • Ensure your most compelling content is at the top.
   • Keep your email text short and simple. Do not make the reader scroll-down too much.
2. Links should be easy to identify and clearly labeled
   • Make the links identifiable to readers by making them colored or underlined.
   • Summarize the content of the page in the hyperlink, to allow readers to make a choice to click on the link on not.
3. Tie your emails to the landing pages
   • Landing pages and emails need to have a common design.
   • Emails should prepare a case for what the landing page has to offer.

Development

1. Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Styles
   • Use Inline CSS for styling – internal CSS is ignored by few email clients, and external CSS is not supported in Marketo.
   • Avoid padding property of style attribute – Marketo does not support it.
2. HTML Code
   • Use table layout for best delivery.
   • Avoid code redundancy – create and use templates where possible.
3. Mobile Friendly
   • Maintain email template width between 500-600px.
   • Keep the subject line short so that it can be read in one go.
   • Keep the content concise and highlight the links to separate them from the main content.

Presentation

1. Use Images Wisely
   • Avoid using images for important content like headlines, links, and any calls to action.
   • Add height and width attribute to the image tag. This ensures that your design doesn’t get squeezed or bleeds on the edges.
   • Always use alt attribute of an image so that if the reader doesn’t download the images or images fails to load, the email still gives the required information.
   • Always use border attribute of an image (border=”0”) as few email clients and browsers add borders to images by default.
   • Avoid Image Sprites, as Marketo (An image sprite is a collection of images put into a single image) does not support them.
   • Avoid background images as they are not supported by email clients.
2. Test the Email
   • Test your emails on popular email clients before sending. Marketo provides the option to send test emails – making email testing easy.
   • Always add text version of your email to the instance so that if any email client doesn’t support HTML, a text version is delivered.

Trust

1. Manage user preference and opt-out
   • Always give the user an option to unsubscribe, if he is not interested.
   • Add a privacy policy link in the footer is a good practice.
2. Give readers a sense of security
   • Use relevant subject lines.
   • Add a recognizable and trusted sender name and address.
3. Segment the List
   • Get a separate list of prospects who are interested in your newsletter/campaign.
   • Respect the reader who unsubscribed the email, remove them from the list, and nurture them with their interests.