Marketing Cloud Engagement - Troubleshooting and FAQs for Email Display Issues

Common Troubleshooting Methods

Recipient email environments are diverse, and email display can vary depending on the email client used and its settings. Therefore, it's challenging to resolve all display issues solely by adjusting Marketing Cloud Engagement settings. You need to narrow down the cause from both the sender and receiver perspectives. This section explains the steps for performing test sends to identify the root cause of display problems.

1. Perform Test Sends and Display Checks Across Multiple Environments:

Conduct tests from the following perspectives to pinpoint the cause of the problem:

• Check for Differences by Email Client: Open the same email using the same user account using multiple email clients (e.g., desktop version, web version, mobile app version) and compare the results. This helps determine if the issue is specific to a particular email client.
• Check for Differences by User Environment: Send the same email to multiple users within the same email domain and compare the results. This helps determine if the issue is due to a specific user's environment.
• Check for Differences by Email Domain (Receiving Server): Send the same email to multiple users across different email domains and compare the results. This helps determine if the issue is specific to a particular email domain (or its mail server).

2. Adjust HTML/CSS as Needed:

If the test sends reveal display issues, review and modify the email's HTML code and CSS. As explained in "Examples of Reasons for Display Differences" below, HTML and CSS can render differently depending on the receiving environment. Therefore, it's important to adjust them while actively checking the display with test emails.

3. Compare HTML/CSS with Another Email Sent as Expected:

If another email sent as intended, compare the differences between the two. Then, correct the differing parts to see if the email displays as expected.

At this point, if the difference is caused by default features provided by Email Studio/Content Builder (such as content blocks or templates), please include your troubleshooting findings when attaching information for a support case inquiry.

Examples of Reasons for Display Differences

• Email Client's Unique Rendering Rules: Each email client has its own rendering engine for interpreting and displaying HTML emails. Because of this, the same HTML email might appear differently across various clients.
• Differences in CSS Interpretation and Support: Each email client supports and interprets CSS properties differently. An email might display correctly in a preview, but the CSS may not apply as intended in specific clients.
• Image Display Settings and Behavior: HTML email display is affected by a complex interplay of recipient-side image settings, differences in responsive design interpretation, and content combinations. This can lead to display issues in certain clients.

Please note that due to the vast variety of HTML/CSS coding patterns, it may be difficult for us to provide specific code modification suggestions to ensure your email displays as expected. We provide general correction principles and relevant information (such as past similar cases) on best effort basis.

Information Required for Support Inquiries

If the issue persists after following the troubleshooting steps above and you suspect a factor on the Marketing Cloud Engagement side, please contact our support team with the following information:

• Source of the received email (including headers and email body) *
• Screenshots clearly showing the character corruption issue
• Email information: Job ID and a sample subscriber key (not needed if you provide the received email source)

*Please note: While you might sometimes provide the email source after it has been forwarded to another email service, forwarding an email alters the data sent by Marketing Cloud Engagement, making it difficult to investigate character corruption. Therefore, please provide the email source directly as received from Marketing Cloud Engagement.

FAQ

Q. Why does the email display differently in Email Studio's preview compared to the actual received email?
A. Email Studio's preview function provides a general indication of how the email might look on the administration screen. However, the actual display depends on the client's rendering mechanism, so it's possible for the display to differ from the preview. For this reason, it's crucial to‌ send the email and confirm its appearance while modifying the code.

Q. Why do certain parts of the email (e.g., spacing, borders, font size, line breaks) appear differently than intended?
A. This occurs for the same reasons as explained in the previous answer, "Email Studio's preview vs. actual received email display." Email display is heavily dependent on the recipient's email client's HTML interpretation and CSS support. Therefore, it may not display exactly as it does in the preview. Please refer to the previous answer and adjust your HTML/CSS code while checking the display with actual test emails.

Q. Phone numbers, URLs, or addresses unintentionally appear as links (blue text), or conversely, do not appear as links.

A. This is caused by the "automatic linking" behavior of the recipient's email client or the presence (or absence) of HTML tags. Many email clients (such as Gmail, Outlook, and mobile apps) automatically detect strings that look like phone numbers or URLs and convert them into links. Conversely, depending on the string pattern, they may not be recognized as URLs and will not become links.

Since this behavior is determined by the recipient's environment, it cannot be uniformly controlled by Marketing Cloud Engagement settings. Please adjust the content according to the email format:

<For HTML Emails>

Please adjust the HTML or CSS code. Use CSS or meta tags to prevent unwanted automatic linking/styling, or explicitly use <a> tags to ensure links function correctly.

<For Text Emails>

Please adjust the text string format. Since styling is not possible in plain text, modify the formatting (such as delimiters or spacing) so that the email client recognizes (or ignores) the pattern as desired.

Q. The link URL has been rewritten to a string that is neither the original URL nor the SAP domain (e.g., click.~).

A. This is likely due to "URL rewriting" (wrapping) processing by security products or email services on the recipient's side. If security features designed to prevent phishing or malware are enabled in the recipient's environment, links in the email may be automatically rewritten to URLs that route through a server for safety checks.

This behavior is based on the recipient's security policy and cannot be avoided by Marketing Cloud Engagement settings. Although the appearance of the URL changes, it is expected to redirect to the original destination after the security check upon clicking.

Q. Can JavaScript embedded in the email or specific tags (like video, audio tags) be made to work?
A. No, ‌script tags are automatically removed from content by Marketing Cloud Engagement for security reasons. Furthermore, even if they were to remain in the email, most email clients do not permit JavaScript execution as a security measure. Therefore, you should avoid using JavaScript.

For other specific HTML5 tags like video and audio tags, it is technically possible to include them within Marketing Cloud Engagement's Content Builder. However, whether these tags function as intended is entirely dependent on the specifications of the recipient's email client. Therefore, if you choose to use these tags, make sure to perform the actual test sends across multiple major email clients and verify how they are displayed.

Q. (Mainly in webmail client) Part of the text differs from what was sent.
A. If the recipient's browser has a translation feature or an extension enabled, the email body may be automatically translated and displayed with unintended text. This phenomenon is caused by the recipient's environment settings, so the sender cannot force the display. In this case, please advise the recipient to temporarily turn off the translation feature in their browser or email client to see if the original text is displayed.

Q. Unintended line breaks appear in the email.
A. Line breaks may be inserted in the email body in unexpected positions not set in Content Builder. This issue can often be resolved by enabling Base64 encoding. As per the article below, this needs to be enabled via a support case, and we may recommend enabling it during the course of your inquiry about this issue. There are no particular disadvantages to enabling it.

Q. The email subject or body text is displayed with garbled characters.
A. Character corruption (mojibake) can be caused by factors on both the sender and receiver sides, so you need to isolate the cause. Below are examples of checkpoints for both the sender (Marketing Cloud Engagement) and the receiver.

Marketing Cloud Engagement Settings Check

1. UTF-8 Encoding for Sent Emails:
When creating and saving an email, confirm that the character encoding is set to "UTF-8." If another encoding was used, try using UTF-8 to see if the issue is resolved. The steps for confirmation are detailed in Change Email Encoding Settings.
Note: In rare cases, if an email server or client cannot interpret UTF-8 encoding, sending with UTF-8 could actually be the cause of character corruption. In this case, consider sending with a different character encoding that only that specific subscriber's system can handle.

2. HTML Code Check:
While there are many possible causes for character corruption due to differences in HTML code, for email content pasted as HTML, inconsistent settings like the following might occur:

For example:

• The character encoding specified in the Meta tag of the HTML differs from the character encoding setting in "1. UTF-8 Encoding for Sent Emails" above.
• Check if, for instance, the encoding setting is UTF-8 while the HTML Meta tag specifies Shift-JIS.
• Advanced email clients may sometimes correctly display content even with the above errors, by intelligently interpreting the content. This is why character corruption might occur only on specific email clients.

<Examples of Isolating Character Corruption Causes on the Receiving End>

Determine if the problem is specific to a particular receiving environment or if it affects a broader range. For example, check from the following perspectives:

• Misinterpretation of character encoding by the email client software (e.g., displaying UTF-8 as Shift_JIS).

  • Try switching the displayed character encoding to see if the garbled text is resolved.

• Data corruption or rewriting during email forwarding.

  • This occurs when received emails are forwarded to another mail server or passed through security products.
  • Isolate the issue by temporarily turning off forwarding settings or security product configurations.

When Only the Sender (Marketing Cloud Engagement) is Suspected as the Cause:

As mentioned, character corruption can result from factors on both the sender and receiver sides. However, character corruption caused solely by the sender side might include examples like the following:

• Similar garbled characters appear consistently across multiple ISPs and email clients.
• Standard content blocks provided by Marketing Cloud Engagement contain unexpected or non-standard HTML/CSS.
• Specific character code points for certain strings are not using standard representations (e.g., "あ" is represented as U+3043 instead of U+3042).