Email Design Best Practices: How to Improve Your Email Conversion Rate

Marketo Engage is a powerful tool for marketing automation, but when it comes to email design flexibility, many users find its built-in editor limiting. Creating visually compelling, mobile-responsive emails often requires custom coding or workarounds, slowing down workflow and making it harder to execute high-quality campaigns efficiently.

That is where Beefree comes in. By integrating Beefree’s no-code, drag-and-drop email design platform with Marketo Engage’s advanced automation capabilities, teams can build professional, responsive emails without coding headaches and push them directly to Marketo in just a few clicks.

This article explores:

• The challenges of designing emails directly in Marketo
• How Beefree solves these pain points
• A step-by-step guide to integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage
• Common FAQs and troubleshooting tips

The challenges of designing emails directly in Marketo

Marketo’s built-in email editor is useful for basic templates but presents several limitations for marketers and designers.

• Limited design flexibility – Customizing layouts, fonts, or interactive elements can be difficult without custom HTML or Marketo’s proprietary syntax.
• Technical barriers – Advanced customizations often require HTML knowledge or an understanding of Marketo’s email template language, which may not be ideal for non-technical teams.
• Time-consuming manual processes – Without a centralized style kit, teams may struggle to stay on-brand and often have to manually recreate headers, footers, and other reusable content blocks for each email, adding extra steps and slowing down production.

Due to these challenges, many marketing teams turn to external email builders like Beefree, FeedOtter, or Knak to improve design efficiency and automation.

Why Beefree is the best email builder for Marketo Engage

While other external email builders like Knak and FeedOtter also integrate with Marketo, Beefree offers distinct advantages.

• No-code drag-and-drop builder – Enables teams to design professional emails without writing any code.
• Advanced design features – Provides more customization options beyond what Marketo’s built-in editor allows.
• Mobile-responsive templates – Ensures emails adjust automatically for both desktop and mobile devices.
• One-click export to Marketo – Simplifies the process of moving email designs directly into Marketo Engage.
• Ability to update existing templates – Allows quick updates without requiring manual re-imports of HTML files.
• Team collaboration – Enables teams to work together in real time, with built-in guardrails and approval controls to ensure error-free emails before exporting.

By integrating Beefree with Marketo, marketing teams eliminate design frustrations and manual email imports, allowing them to focus on high-performing email campaigns.

Learn more about Beefree's integration with Marketo Enagage [https://support.beefree.io/hc/en-us/articles/24837761625618-Export-Emails-to-Marketo]

How to update existing email templates in Marketo

Instead of manually editing HTML, Beefree allows users to edit emails in Beefree and update existing ones in Marketo Engage with one click.

1. Open the email design in Beefree.
2. Make changes and click “Export.”
3. Select “Update Existing” to overwrite the previous version in Marketo Engage.

This feature ensures that emails and templates remain up to date without requiring complex HTML edits or duplicates.

Frequently asked questions on using Beefree with Marketo Engage

Can I use Beefree with other ESPs besides Marketo Engage?

Yes! You can connect Beefree to any ESP, MAP, or CRM including Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and others. To learn more about how to integrate Beefree to your sending platform watch the video below: 

For a full list of our native integrations visit [https://beefree.io/integrations].

Are there any limitations when exporting Beefree emails to Marketo?

Yes, there are a few important limitations to be aware of:

• Charset emojis are not supported in Marketo. Including emojis in your email content may result in an error. To prevent this, Beefree automatically replaces unsupported emojis with a placeholder. For more details, refer to the [Marketo documentation on emoji support].
  
  

Preheader text is not a native field in Marketo. However, Beefree includes it by embedding the preheader directly in the email's HTML code during export.

Additional resources and links

• [https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/marketo/using/home] Official Marketo Engage email builder documentation
• [https://support.beefree.io/hc/en-us/articles/24837761625618-Export-Emails-to-Marketo] Beefree-Marketo integration guide

Why you should use Beefree with Marketo Engage

By integrating Beefree with Marketo Engage, marketing teams gain a faster, more flexible way to build high-converting, on-brand email campaigns—while leveraging Marketo’s powerful automation and analytics to track performance and optimize results.

• Design responsive, professional emails with ease.
• Maintain brand consistency across every message.
• Collaborate efficiently and gain insights to improve campaign performance.

Ready to elevate your Marketo email marketing? Try Beefree today and streamline your entire email creation process.

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Email is king when it comes to talking directly to your customers. Sure, we might send texts or share voice notes, but we all still check our emails. It’s how we keep in touch with work and the businesses we connect with. 

As an email marketer, this puts you in prime position to get your business’s brand right into the hands of your customers. The problem, however, is that you must first get past the metaphorical guard dog known as the secure email gateway (SEG). 

SEGs use sophisticated methods to identify and block spam and phishing emails from ever entering a person’s inbox. While your email newsletters should go through, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will. That’s why businesses need to know what a secure email gateway is and how it works. Know this key info, and you’ll be able to improve the chances of your emails reaching their destination. 

What are email security gateways? 

Protecting yourself from cyber threats is the basis of all cybersecurity risk assessment services. One of the biggest gaps in any security armor is phishing emails. If they get through and someone clicks a link they shouldn’t have, it’s almost impossible to stop the damage. 

The victim could be anyone. The link could lead to a ransomware virus that holds your data captive or be the start of a data breach. It could even lead to a traditional scam that has you input your credit card details so a thief can steal them. 

For all these reasons and more, email providers consistently invest in security features to help protect their customers. One such feature is an email security gateway. 

A secure email gateway uses AI and machine learning to screen incoming emails, identify spam, and stop it from entering. If there’s any doubt, the system quarantines the email in your spam box for review. 

Why are secure email gateways important?

While we are getting better at filtering out spam emails, an estimated 45.6% of emails sent in 2023 were still spam. This poses a massive security risk for consumers, businesses, and governments alike. 

According to IBM, businesses are hit the hardest, with the global average cost of each successful phishing attack increasing to $4.88M USD. The attacks don’t just hit businesses, either, with attacks targeting individuals and even charities.

Just as phishing and spam emails have become more sophisticated, so have the tools designed to protect against them. All providers, including big names like Gmail, use SEGs to secure communications and other features, such as Gmail’s unsubscribe feature. 

What do SEGs flag as spam? 

SEGs continually update their parameters. This means that what they check for is constantly in flux. What SEGs look for today, for example, could include: 

• Strange or suspicious subject lines
• Highly urgent capitalization or excessive exclamation points
• Strange URLs
• Poor grammar and/or spelling
• Generic greetings that don’t address the recipient 
• Suspicious email addresses
• The volume of emails sent at once
• Attachment types 
• Image-heavy content 

SEGs are far more advanced than just ticking boxes, but that doesn’t mean your emails can’t get blocked or sent to spam. After all, you might put together a great email campaign, but if your email is too image-heavy, it might get quarantined or sent to spam. 

The good news is that once you know what the SEGs look for, you can work to design better emails. Beefree can help you get started, with a range of templates for responsive email designs.

How to create newsletters with secure email gateways in mind 

The good news is that you can implement and send out most, if not all, of your newsletter ideas without issue. So long as the emails are well-made and are sent at a reasonable frequency, you’ll be golden. 

Start by first improving your security methods

In general, you should always look at ramping up the security measures in your business. You can use one of the top types of risk assessment matrix to understand your business's threats and how to resolve them. Then, since you already have that information, you can use it to create better newsletters and emails. 

Make sure the personalization feature works

One of the biggest red flags for an SEG is a generic greeting. Adding Dear Sir/Madam at the start isn’t going to fly in today’s world. Even if your email gets through, it’s unlikely the recipient will open it. 

That’s why you need personalization. Linking your email marketing tools to your customer relationship management system means you can offer easy personalization, like addressing your customers by name, or even offering personalized recommendations based on their order history. 

Avoid image-only emails 

Image-only emails are tempting for an email marketer. They’re striking, they look good, and you can fine-tune what they look like in Photoshop or another image editor. 

They can also be a red flag for SEGs.

Thankfully, the solution is simple: enrich your emails. The best part about this approach is that it also improves the accessibility. Improving email accessibility will help ensure that all your customers can engage with your emails on their terms. Those emails will also load faster, look great on all devices, and be more engaging. 

Align your emails with the landing pages 

SEGs look out for suspicious links. A link might be suspicious if there’s a misspelling or if the link doesn’t sound like the content in the email. So, how do you ensure that SEGs don’t see any of your links as suspicious? 

You make them predictable. 

An easy way to do this is to create a landing page from an email. On top of aligning the landing page with the content of the newsletter, you’ll want to: 

• Make a custom URL for every link that matches the content of the page 
• Ensure there’s no misspelling
• Don’t use urgent language around your link

Use 2FA to boost security

Do you need 2FA to get past SEGs? No, but it’s a great way to help protect you and your customers. 

You can protect sensitive data by adding user identity verification. For example, a customer may get an order confirmation email but wants to cancel or change the delivery details. Including a two-factor authentication step ensures only the customer can request changes. 

Building in extra security features puts your customers at ease. It also protects your endpoints and, in turn, your business. So, no, you don’t need 2FA to get past SEGs, but it’s worth looking into for you and your customers’ protection. 

Avoid urgency 

Urgency can be a flag for SEGs. So: 

• DON’T WRITE IN ALL CAPS
• Minimize the use of exclamation points

Think of the copy in your newsletter as a chance to win over your audience, not scare them into clicking the link. Doing this will improve your relationship with your customers since they’ve come to you on their terms. It’s also essential to get emails past the SEG.

Key takeaways 

Secure email gateways are a primary defense against spam and phishing attacks, but they can pose a problem for email marketers. By working to understand the security risks associated with email scams, you can then understand what your email needs to make it into inboxes. 

From there, you’ll want to make your emails more personable, accessible, and secure. Once you’ve found that sweet spot, your newsletters will be more likely to get past the secure email gateway and into your audience’s inboxes.