Marketo Email Template Partner

I've used Knak templates before. They work just fine and provide a decent starting point for more advanced and interesting customization options.

Edit: If you are trying to build just a single template to use, maybe consider hiring a designer for a few hours or someone who can build you a Marketo template easily. If your needs change over time you'd likely need to rehire them but I'd be surprised if you didn't have some internal resources to help you modify HTML email templates.

Knak is good.

The real question is how many variations do you need and are you able to easily make the Knak templates conform to your brand needs? Knak can customize further for a fee. You can also hire a freelancer or agency to build templates and help maintain them.

Grazitti and Perkuto can also do this.

I used Perkuto's Allegro template and we really like it!

Here's a related thread:

Re: any agencies creating email templates?

Email Monks offer very affordable (and quick) customized Marketo modular 2.0 templates (and Landing Pages). Regardless of which service provider you select, make sure you provide all brand guidelines. I've found it best to design internally or hire a creative agency for design and then outsource the template coding.

From the Community Guidelines:

I am a fervent Knak fan!  They have the email and landing page templates, true, but they also offer an enterprise tool where you can build your own email layouts on the fly.  Excellent tool, excellent customer support.  We became a customer after meeting Pierce at the 2017 Summit.  Feel free to ask any specific questions if you have any.

Andreia - one thing that's important with responsive and modular templates is a clear idea of your requirements. A good analogy might be car shopping - there's a ton of options from power-windows (toggles) to # of doors and color (# of sections and branding). You can expect a pretty wide range of options (and costs) and a good email developer should understand your audience and the devices they use so that you get a template that's both modern and appropriate to your audience with the feature you need to create the variations you'd actually use. Said another way, you can buy anything with 4 wheels to get around, but a good salesperson is going to get you into something that suits your lifestyle and use-cases.

I've seen kinda two schools of thought with this:

1. We need something for now, for this design and use-case. Pro: Quick, cheap and efficient. Cons: Limited flexibility, support and tailoring

2. We need something that's flexible and able to stand the test of time (and reuse) Pro: Long-term cost-savings,consistency, scalable Cons: Short-term cost is high, requires planning and longer timeframe

Generally, you can expect to pay much more for the later, but it's money you'll make back in the long-run by paying for occasional updates instead of new templates. It might be good to keep in mind that you could always hire an expert developer for a few hours to add any add'l features that didn't come with your template if you get a pre-packaged deal, but not all email frameworks are created equally so it's usually best to look for a team that both creates and supports their templates for their clients. Personally, I've heard fantastic things about Knak for its ease of use and that might prove to be a good starting point for you.

...and the million dollar question to ask anyone who's developing an email template for you: Have you logged into Marketo before?

I thought this would go without saying, but it's important to understand that "designing an email" (graphics) is much different than coding an email, but you'll need both to make it sing! Marketo's email 2.0 is amazingly customizable and you'll get the most for your money from anyone who's familiar with that and not just "email design in general".

You need to make a choice between 2 approaches here:

• The Master Template (MT) way: in this one, you usually will have one (Master) template with a quite large number of modules in it. Without leaving Marketo, simply in adding, cloning, moving and removing modules, you can create an unlimited number of emails from one template. Most of the time, you should be able to use one template to cover all your needs, if the design has been well thought of. Typically a Master template with 25 to 30 different modules will cover all needs. You will need a good dev service, framework-based, to create your master template at a reasonable cost. You will also need to have the graphical design done an well thought of before you can call in the template developer.
• The Template Library (TL) way: in this one, you benefit from a library of template such as Marketo starter templates, Knak's or other similar services, usually well designed and well developed, which makes this approach a good one for a quick start and if you not have someone to think about the graphical design. In this model, you will use different templates for different needs, and even if these template are modular, the number of modules in a single template is limited and you will need multiple templates to cover all your needs. Some combinations of modules will not be possible since she modules do not co-exist in the same template. Also, use a service that is integrated to Marketo and can inject templates in Marketo and enables you to avoid the error-prone copy-paste.

There is no perfect choice, simply be aware that the highest number of templates is not necessarily equivalent to being the most flexible solution. Our experience is that more and more Marketo customers are moving to the Master Template approach. One of the big pros of the Master template approach is that you can clone an email and completely modify its layout, which is impossible if different layouts require different templates (you cannot change the template an existing email). In the Template library approach, you will more often be led to recreate the email from zero, which can be a little painful when the email you want to redesign is being used by smart lists, smart campaigns etc... You will have to remove all adherences before you can delete it.

-Greg

We've been usng Knak for a few years now and they've just got better and better. To Josh's point earlier, we had problems with variations early one, but the templates are a lot more flexible nowadays... and Pierce and his guys are very open to feedback, too.