How to troubleshoot blank email content issues in Pardot/MCAE?
Summary
What email marketers say7Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Stack Overflow suggests inspecting the HTML source of the email for missing or corrupted content. They advise checking for encoding issues and ensuring all images and assets are loading correctly. Additionally, they recommend testing the email across multiple email clients and devices.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains that missing the doctype can cause rendering issues in some email clients. Always declare the email as HTML and test to ensure your doctype decleration is working.
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that inconsistent rendering across email clients is a common issue, and debugging often involves identifying problematic HTML or CSS. They recommend using email testing tools to preview emails in various email clients and devices to pinpoint rendering differences.
Email marketer from Quora suggests checking the email's character encoding to ensure it is set to UTF-8, as incorrect encoding can lead to display issues. They also recommend validating the HTML to ensure it is well-formed and free of errors.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor explains that nested tables and excessive use of images can cause rendering issues in some email clients. They advise simplifying the email structure and optimizing images for web use to improve rendering and load times.
Email marketer from HubSpot explains that rendering issues can be found by A/B testing email campaigns. Make sure to test to ensure your emails are rendering how you want them to.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests that blank email content could be due to aggressive spam filters stripping out important HTML elements. They recommend testing the email's spam score using tools like Mail-Tester and adjusting the content accordingly.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that the use of absolute URLs for images and links is crucial to ensure that images load correctly and links are functional. If relative URLs are used, some email clients may not be able to resolve them, resulting in broken images or non-functional links which can lead to a perception of a blank or broken email.
Expert from Email Geeks speculates on possible reasons for blank emails, suggesting it could be due to enterprise email filters or message corruption. He recommends examining the raw message to identify modifications or malformations and rule out possibilities.
Expert from Word to the Wise emphasizes the importance of testing your HTML emails using a service that shows you screenshots from a range of email clients. You can use these screenshots to identify and diagnose rendering issues that may be causing emails to appear blank for some recipients.
Expert from Email Geeks indirectly helps marketer from Email Geeks identify the root cause of blank emails. Marketer from Email Geeks discovers that bad nested <!--[if mso]> css statements were causing issues in older versions of Outlook and O365.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the plain text and HTML parts are base64 encoded and provides guidance on decoding them to view the content. He suggests using web pages or command-line tools for decoding.
What the documentation says6Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft explains that emails may have content blocked if they are deemed to be suspicious or from an untrusted source. Ensure you use clear and accurate subject lines and valid sender information.
Documentation from Oracle Help Center notes that using complex CSS animations or JavaScript in emails can lead to rendering issues or be blocked by certain email clients. They recommend keeping the email design simple and using fallback options for elements that may not be supported.
Documentation from Mailgun highlights the importance of using inline CSS for styling HTML emails, as external stylesheets may not be supported by all email clients. They also suggest avoiding complex HTML structures and using tables for layout to ensure consistent rendering across different email clients.
Documentation from Salesforce Help explains that rendering issues in Pardot emails can arise from unsupported HTML, CSS, or syntax errors. They recommend using the email testing tools to preview emails in different email clients and debugging code to ensure compatibility.
Documentation from Stripo explains that emails can have rendering problems when they aren't accessible. Images should have ALT tags and ARIA descriptions so screen readers know what they are.
Documentation from Litmus emphasizes the importance of proper HTML structure and the use of a valid doctype. They explain that a missing or incorrect doctype can cause email clients to render emails in quirks mode, leading to unexpected display issues. Also, they also suggest using their testing tools to test the email