Marketo is one of the largest acquisitions made by Adobe before Figma and it serves tech giants like General Electronics, Panasonic, and CloudFlare while it has also collaborated with Google. With a market share of 21.56%, Marketo is one of the most popular marketing automation software with a diverse range of features such as email automation capabilities, A/B testing, an engagement engine, Design Studio, smart lists, and smart list subscription, and many others
However, there are not many guides and discussions available on Marketo’s email capabilities except on its own Marketo Nation and Marketo Community. Considering this shortage of discussions, the Marketo Certified experts at Sootra Consulting have compiled this article to discuss Marketo modules, a basic yet essential component of the engagement suite.
Let’s get started:
First thing first: What Do You Mean by Marketo Modules?
A major part of an HTML template in Email Editor 2.0 consists of HTML content, elements, and variables. These include images, headers, social links, and other significant elements that are examples of Marketo Modules. Marketers need these modules to build and customize email templates that will make their emails look, feel, and function as visually appealing and user-friendly emails.
The predefined modules like email header/footer are called ‘Partials’ while custom modules are developed for a specific email.
How to Use Marketo Modules?
In this section, we will show you the step-by-step process for adding Marketo Modules:
Step #1: First, create an email by either selecting an existing template or creating a new email template.
Step #2: On the top right corner, click on “Modules”.
Step #3: Use the drag-and-drop feature of the Email Editor 2.0, and drag the module you want to insert in the template. The “Drop here” option will appear in the areas where you can insert the module.
After an automatic refresh, the module will appear in the designated space:
To move modules, you can either drag and move them or use the options by selecting the module and clicking on the gear.
Technicalities in Creating Custom Modules in Marketo Templates
Here, we have shown the technical aspects of creating custom Marketo Modules:
- Use <tr> with class=“mktoModule” to specify <table>, <tbody>, <thead>, or <tfoot> containers.
- Use <td> using <table> with class= “mktoModule”
- You must add class=“mktEditable” on HTML elements with a unique id string containing dash “-”, and underscore “_”, devoid of spaces.
- You may also use the “mktoName” string with a proper description.
- For images, you need to use the class: “mktoImg” and “mktoName” strings. You can also use additional strings like “mktoImgClass”, “mktoImgSrc”, “mktoImgLink”, “mktoImgLinkTarget”, “mktoImgWidth”, “mktoImgHeight”, “mktoLockImgSize”, and “mktoLockImgStyle”
Similarly, you can specify snippets, videos, lists, numbers, colors, booleans, HTML blocks, and so on with the help of the above rules.
Using the code below, you can save your modules in a master container:
<!– Module Container Table –>
<table cellpadding=”0″ cellspacing=”0″ border=”0″ width=”100%” align=”center”>
<tr>
<td class=”mktoContainer” id=”mkto-container”>
******All your module sections should go in here******
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!–End of Module Container –>
Benefits of Using Marketo Modules
Here we have listed the three major advantages of using Marketo Modules:
#1 Scalability
The biggest advantage you can avail yourself of by utilizing Marketo Modules (both predefined and custom) is that you can scale your email marketing efforts with ease. Most brands repeat various technical bits of their HTML email templates. Using modules allows them to avoid repeating the coding process. Thus, Marketo Modules facilitate the scalability of marketing operations in the email template development process and also, assist in the Quality Audit (QA) process.
#2 Modularization
Using modules helps modularize templates which allow your team to create more templates while significantly reducing the development time and cost. Modules can enable your team to focus on the visual aesthetics and unique looks of your emails that can entice your subscribers without having to ponder or compromise the technical or functional capabilities of your emails.
#3 Consistency
It is important to ensure brand consistency in all your emails. The uniformity of Marketo modules aligns each template with your brand’s central theme. Moreover, the interoperability of modules makes it easier for your subscribers to interact with your emails.
Thus, Marketo Modules help maintains branding consistency while reducing the coding turnaround time and also, help manage email marketing campaigns more efficiently.
Wrap Up
When it comes to leveraging Marketo for email marketing, businesses need to seek assistance from experts since using Marketo efficiently requires a good amount of learning and experience.
Users need to clear Marketo’s certification exams after clearing its courses to become a Marketo Certified Associate (MCA) and then, Marketo Certified Expert (MCE). Hiring such resources in-house might not be financially viable for most companies and thus, hiring an email marketing agency like Sootra Consulting can help you make the most out of the Marketo Engage platform.
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