Has anyone been successful in adding Gmail annotation to a Marketo email template?

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Hi

I'm new to the Marketo Community and not sure if this the best board to ask questions about Marketo email templates.

We are a adding a new modular email template to Marketo with Gmail Annotations but getting this error message:

"Marketo does not allow javascript or script tags in email HTML. Please refresh your browser."

Has anyone had a similar problem? Thank you 🙂

Marketo

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SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution

Level 10

Yes, you can use Gmail Annotations in Marketo emails.

The problem is you're choosing the JSON-LD format for your annotations (which isn‘t the only format) and Marketo mistakenly thinks JSON-LD, which uses a <script> tag to create an HTML data block, is instead an executable script. In reality, it’s not executable and poses no security concern.

You can skip this check by adding the <script> tag to the <head> of the template and putting an Email Script {{my.token}} inside it. The {{my.token}} contains the JSON.

P

PhillipWi1

Level 9

The above solutions will work, but in the past I used the microdata format instead to get around this:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/reference/formats/microdata

There might be drawbacks to this compared to the script option, but I haven't found them yet.

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LillyFaAuthor

Level 3

Thanks @phillipwi1 ! Would you mind elaborating on how I could implement this solution? My knowledge of HTML is quite limited.

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SanfordWhiteman

Level 10

I would not use Microdata, which is outdated. (Google recommends JSON-LD over the alternatives). Continue using JSON-LD.

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SanfordWhitemanAccepted solution

Level 10

Yes, you can use Gmail Annotations in Marketo emails.

The problem is you're choosing the JSON-LD format for your annotations (which isn‘t the only format) and Marketo mistakenly thinks JSON-LD, which uses a <script> tag to create an HTML data block, is instead an executable script. In reality, it’s not executable and poses no security concern.

You can skip this check by adding the <script> tag to the <head> of the template and putting an Email Script {{my.token}} inside it. The {{my.token}} contains the JSON.

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LillyFaAuthor

Level 3

Amazing., thank you! I'll add the <script type="application/ld+json"> to a snippet inside the head tag and report back if have any issues.

I should have thought of this, especially as I'll need to edit some of the content periodically but wasn't sure if possible. I haven't had much luck with tokens, they are less flexible and a bit buggy (cannot determine which assets attached to).

Do you know if there are any best practices for coding HTML snippets? I have been using a bit of trial and error as cannot find any Marketo documentation or discussion about this.

Thanks again! Your answers are always so helpful 🙂

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SanfordWhiteman

Level 10

I should have thought of this, especially as I'll need to edit some of the content periodically but wasn't sure if possible. I haven't had much luck with tokens, they are less flexible and a bit buggy (cannot determine which assets attached to).

Hmm, I wouldn’t say they’re buggy, tokens are kind of the lifeblood of a manageable Marketo instance!

It’s true that determining ‘Used By‘ isn’t possible, but you have to consider that in token-centric instances — which most complex Marketo instances are — you could be talking about 10,000+ assets referencing a {{my.token}}. So it wouldn’t be useful to see a list of the assets, since it would overflow any reasonable display.

Do you know if there are any best practices for coding HTML snippets? I have been using a bit of trial and error as cannot find any Marketo documentation or discussion about this.

Not any practices that are different from coding HTML for email in general.

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