Adobe’s New Marketo Email Designer Explained

Adobe has introduced the new Marketo Email Designer as part of its wider push to modernise the Marketo Engage experience. For years, marketers have been calling for a more intuitive, modular and streamlined way to build emails without relying heavily on HTML or development teams. The new designer is Adobe’s answer: a no-code, drag-and-drop workspace designed to speed up production, improve brand consistency and bring Marketo in-line with more contemporary content-creation tools.

For everyday Marketo users, this matters. It has the potential to reduce operational bottlenecks, simplify template management and make modular content far easier to scale. But as with any major update, the real value depends on how it performs in practice and how quickly Adobe evolves it.

Our Senior Martech Experts, Andi Caulton and Calum Leach, share an overview of Marketo’s New Email Designer and what marketers should consider before adopting it across their campaign operations.

A More Modern Email Building Experience

The new designer introduces:

• Drag-and-drop editing for faster, no-code email and template creation

• HTML import for organisations with existing template libraries

• Reusable Fragments to replace legacy Snippets

• Themes for standardising fonts and colours

These changes make building and maintaining emails more accessible for marketing teams. However, imported HTML opens in Compatibility Mode. This allows basic editing (text, images, deleting sections) but prevents use of modern features such as Fragments. Converting the template to fully editable mode unlocks those features but may introduce rendering issues. For example, buttons (CTAs) often break in Outlook because the imported design is placed inside a single container.

In short: the experience is more modern and flexible, but HTML conversions still require care.

Modularity and Brand Control

Fragments

Fragments allow teams to build modular email components that can be reused across campaigns. They streamline updates and improve consistency, but their placement is limited - especially in converted templates that collapse into a single container.

Themes

Themes introduce light-touch governance by enforcing colours and typography. However, they only work with templates built directly in the new designer and don’t offer the deeper guardrails many enterprise teams need.

Rendering, Testing & Reliability

This is where users should be cautious.

• The editor preview doesn’t always match the inbox rendering, particularly in Outlook which does not support as many styling options as Gmail and iOS inboxes. Background colours, spacing and alignment can appear differently.

• The test-send workflow is slower, more manual and requires more steps than expected.

• Converted HTML can introduce limitations such as spacing issues and broken CTAs, causing them to render incorrectly and restrict where Fragments can be used.

Teams should expect additional QA cycles when using this designer.

Operational & Workflow Considerations

Key considerations for day-to-day use:

• Approvals work the same as classic Marketo; there’s no commenting or live collaboration.

• Permissions must be applied through custom Roles.

• Training will be needed on Fragments, Themes and new testing workflows.

• The designer currently supports email only, with landing pages planned for later.

Strengths and Limitations

Strengths

• Faster, no-code building

• Improving modularity with Fragments

• Streamlined visual interface aligned with Adobe’s direction

• Easy HTML import for transition from existing templates

Limitations

• Rendering inconsistencies

• Restricted Fragment placement in converted templates

• Limited governance controls

• Slower test-send workflow

• No landing page builder yet

Summary: Clevertouch's Take

The new Marketo Email Designer is a strong step toward a more modern, marketer-friendly email-building environment. It will continue to improve as Adobe iterates on Fragments, governance, and rendering reliability.

But today, it’s not yet a full replacement for well-engineered HTML templates - especially if your organisation requires strict brand guardrails or predictable rendering across devices.

Our recommendation: Introduce it gradually. Use it where it accelerates production, rebuild templates natively when needed, and keep your proven HTML templates in place for critical marketing and operational programs.

If you’re exploring the new Marketo Email Designer and want to understand how it could work for your specific use cases, our Marketo consultants can help you assess where it fits within your setup and support best-practice adoption. Fill out our contact form here and we'll be in touch.