How to use Draftship with Marketo Engage
Marketo's email templates wrap content in mkto-modules to make blocks editable in their UI. Here's how to paste Draftship HTML so you keep render fidelity, optionally add module hints for marketers, and resolve tokens correctly.
Marketo Engage was built for B2B marketers who need programmatic nurture at scale, and its email design system reflects that priority. Templates can be either fully coded (one HTML blob, locked from the UI) or modular (HTML wrapped in mkto-module divs that become editable blocks in their visual editor). Draftship's export is the fully coded version. If you want marketers to tweak text inside Marketo, you'll add a thin layer of module hints. If only you ship the email, you can skip them.
Two paths into Marketo
Go to Design Studio → Email Templates → New Template. Pick HTML, paste your Draftship export. Save. Now go to Email Templates → Approve. Approved templates show up in the new email picker.
If you don't add module wrappers, marketers opening the email get a single locked region that says "Edit Code" only. That's fine when one person ships, painful when nobody can fix a typo without engineering.
Token mapping
Marketo uses three layers of tokens: lead tokens (recipient data), my tokens (program-level constants), and system tokens (unsubscribe, view-in-browser). Draftship's variables map mostly to lead tokens.
| Draftship variable | Marketo token |
|---|---|
{{ first_name }} | {{lead.First Name:default=there}} |
{{ last_name }} | {{lead.Last Name}} |
{{ email }} | {{lead.Email Address}} |
{{ company }} | {{lead.Company Name}} |
| Unsubscribe link | {{system.unsubscribeLink}} |
| View online | {{system.viewAsWebpageLink}} |
Note the colon syntax for defaults: {{lead.First Name:default=there}}. Without the default, Marketo renders an empty string for missing values, which leaves you with "Hi ," in the wild.
Optional: making blocks editable in Marketo
Wrap the Draftship sections you want marketers to edit:
html<div class="mktoText" id="hero-text"> <h1>Headline goes here</h1> <p>Body copy.</p> </div>
Class options Marketo recognizes: mktoText (rich text), mktoImg (replaceable image), mktoSnippet (reusable snippet), mktoContainer (groups other modules). Each module needs a unique id. Once approved, marketers see them as editable blocks in the visual editor without seeing the raw HTML.
Sender, send-from, and the operational email type
Before your email can actually leave Marketo, you need:
- A sender identity, not just a from-address. Set this in Admin → Email.
- A decision: is this an operational email (skips unsubscribe rules) or a marketing email (respects unsubscribe). Operational is for password resets, receipts, and similar. Don't mark a campaign operational to bypass opt-outs; CASL and CAN-SPAM both prosecute that.
- A subject line with at least one token if you want preview personalization in Marketo's UI.
Test send checklist
- Use Send Sample with a real lead, not a test lead, to catch token resolution failures.
- Pull the rendered HTML from the sample's preview and run it through the email size checker.
- Confirm the operational checkbox state matches your intent.
- Verify the program's Smart Campaign actually qualifies recipients before scheduling.
When to keep the email in Draftship vs build it in Marketo
If your email is a one-time campaign or part of a system you control end-to-end, Draftship plus Marketo's HTML template is faster and renders better. If your email is part of a long-running nurture where multiple marketers will tweak copy weekly, give in and add the mkto-module wrappers. The 30 minutes spent wrapping pays back the first time someone needs to fix a typo without a deploy.
For more on token defaults and fallback values, see Email merge tag fallbacks.