link not working when you forward email--Sophia (marketo starter)

Question

Hi ,
 
I have this requirement where when we forward an email, the recipients should be able to click CALL TO ACTION links on email.

when I am testing by forwarding,  the link is not accessible in outlook in the above block.  Any suggestions please. We want CTA to work even when email is forwarded from outlook. 
 
Thanks,
Srilekha

SanfordWhiteman · Accepted Answer

We want CTA to work even when email is forwarded from outlook.

Are you sure about that?

If you‘re using tracked Marketo links (the default) then if someone forwards the email, the recipient’s Clicked Email and subsequent Visit Web Page and Clicked Link activities will be credited to the original recipient.

This is almost never desirable, and if links aren’t clickable in a forwarded email, that‘s a good thing. Promoting the use of the Forward To Friend feature is better for all.

Now as for whether links in the original HTML show up after forwarding, this is something you can’t really control. There’s no standard way of (inline) forwarding an email. All mail clients do it differently and breaking the HTML structure should be expected. A text-only email of course doesn’t have this problem.

Dave_Roberts · Answer

Sometimes buttons can get weird in Outlook when you forward an email and that all comes down to how they are coded. Most email templates these days use some kind of "Microsoft Only" code for things like buttons to get them to display nicely in Outlook.

From what I understand, when you receive an email in your inbox, the original code (from Marketo) is changed by the email service to work within the context of your specific inbox service (Gmail, Outlook, etc) -- Outlook is the worst with this IMHO. When you then forward that email, it doesn't have the same code in it that it did when it got to your inbox and that's why things break.

In terms of a solution (although I agree w/ Sanford and in most cases you want to promote the "forward to a friend" link instead of relying on a "straight-up-forward") -- you could try using a text link rather than a button and that might help preserve some of the link functionality compared to using a button w/ more complex (and inbox-dependent) HTML.

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