When to Adopt the Marketo Email Designer?

What Is Marketo Email Designer?

Marketo users that are migrated to the Adobe Identity Management System (IMS) will have seen the new email design functionality appear in their instance from as early as Q1 2025. The long-awaited Marketo Engage Email Designer update is packed full of features:

• AI generated content
• WYSIWYG editor
• Built-in AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) asset repository integration
• An image-to-template creator
• Brand themes
• Content locking

…and so much more.

All sound too good to be true? At the time of writing this (April 2026) it is — at least as far as your customer-facing campaigns are concerned.

The problem is that the new Email Designer functionality is still in a state of beta. It’s loaded with conditions and limitations that make it unsuitable for use in live campaigns. We don’t have a firm date of release to work with either.

When Can You Expect to Adopt Marketo Email Designer?

To me, the question of “when” is simple enough, with a less-so simple response. I’ve been asked enough times (and been through enough release notes) to eventually pen this article about it.

I work closely with global Marketo admins, those individuals and teams that pioneer Marketo for their organisation. They are the subject matter experts for marketing automation platforms and all things marketing operations (MarOps) in their business.

And yet they are stumped when their regional and divisional marketing teams have spotted the new functionality and eagerly asked when they can start using it.

I’m not pointing fingers at the parts of the software that will cause frustration if prematurely used in a live campaign. Or the pain that comes with the “coming soon” in each passing release notes.  

What I want — what all the Marketo consultants at Tap CXM want — is for everybody to get excited about the new features and get prepared for the new functionality. When technical shackles are finally lifted, you and your teams will already be well on your way to making positive business impacts with your refreshed email strategy.

To help you do that just that, I teamed up with one of Tap CXM’s leading email dev professionals, Kelly Wong, to deliver a sure-fire guide to adopting the new Marketo Engage Email Designer.

Step 1: Proactively Communicate Support Limitations

Address the elephant in the room (if you haven’t already!) and exclude the new Email Designer from your internal support processes.

It can be as simple as this: “FYI: The Marketing Ops team will NOT be supporting live campaigns using the new Email Designer until further notice.”

This is especially pertinent for those managing front line support, SLAs, and other ticket response/sprint-type scenarios. Marketing folks love shiny new things and will have explored the latest Email Designer features even if Adobe hadn’t branded the navigation with the stand-out “New” label.

By proactively communicating, you have now freed up resource from trying to solve problems caused by beta-based limitations. You could even create a new ticket category to acknowledge their efforts without distorting real priorities and SLAs

Step 2: Encourage Users to Experiment With the New Email Designer Features

Contrary to Step 1 – or is it? The “new” designer will become the main designer eventually. Adobe has confirmed they will give several months’ notice before the classic editor is deprecated.

Step 1 rules out live campaigns for good reason, but it doesn’t rule out training, exploration, and development.

• Run demonstrations showing off how easy it is to import a flat image and see it converted into an editable template.
• Encourage team members to build it into their personal objectives and CPD (Continuing Professional Development), and facilitate an internal program or guide that enables them.
• Run friendly competitions for best use of new styles or brand themes (the Brand team will love that.)
• Host workshops that will pave the way for Fragments and Conditional content strategies.

Yes, all the features right now are a minefield of teething problems and limitations, but your strategy won’t be by the time the functionality is finally full-fat.

Step 3: Add Marketo Email Designer to the CoE Agenda.

Does your organisation have a Centre of Excellence task force? A group of departmentally diverse Marketo users that meet periodically to police and optimise your Marketo setup? The new Marketo Email Designer adoption strategy is the perfect objective to add to their list of outputs. A refreshing change to their usual debates about consent capture consistency.

We’ve seen many MarOps/CoE teams push back on Email Designer exploration due to the uncertainty of the timescales, and we totally get it. This line of work is challenging enough even when timescales are set in stone.

What we can see, however, is the progress being made by the clients investing time and energy into the new Email Designer.

Step 4: Call Us

We do all the above, of course. We’re a certified Adobe Solutions Partner supporting global B2B brands to drive real business impact with their Adobe Marketo Engage and associated suite of integrations.

Our marketing technology experts – including myself – will guide and train your users so they’re primed and ready to deliver best practice, high performing go-to-market campaigns.

So, When Should You Adopt the New Marketo Email Designer?

The “new” Marketo Engage Email Designer is clearly going to be a game changer for Marketo users globally. Email still dominates as the most effective marketing channel, according to a recent Forbes article.

The challenge that MarOps leaders with Marketo Engage are facing right now is how to effectively navigate the adoption of new updates which come with so many caveats and conditions, and no firm dates of release or relief!

History teaches Marketing Technology leaders to deal with problems without deadlines by pushing them down the road until they eventually sort themselves or naturally acquire a deadline.

As appealing as this option seems amongst the backdrop of your current workload and corporate objectives, I’d like to gently remind you that your marketing automation team will out-perform your competitors and last year’s results if they hit the ground running when – not if – Adobe changes the release notes from “coming soon” to “released.”

Right now, your organisation needs you to be the disciplined visionary that can see beyond the temporary limitations. That means beginning the Marketo Email Designer adoption process with purpose and patience, starting today.