Marketo makes it easy to build sophisticated, automated marketing campaigns. But when those campaigns need to work across borders and languages, it’s important to put in place the right translation process so you can avoid bottlenecks and get your messaging to market quickly. It’s even more critical to have a translation partner you can trust by your side, so you can let them handle more of the process of exporting/importing translations and dealing with in-country teams to secure sign off.
This guide is for Marketo users who need to translate assets efficiently without breaking workflows, branding or compliance requirements.
Translating assets in Marketo
Marketo wasn’t built as a translation management system. As a result, teams often struggle with:
- Copying and pasting content manually into Word or spreadsheets
- Losing context (where string appear; their purpose)
- Version control issues across markets
- Inconsistent terminology and tone
- Delays caused by rework and approvals
The good news: with the right process, Marketo content can be translated smoothly and at scale. Before we look at that, let’s first explore the content types that often need translating.
Frequently translated Marketo content types
Most Marketo users focus on these assets:
- Email campaigns
- Forms
- Snippets
- Dynamic content blocks
Each requires a slightly different approach – especially emails, snippets and content blocks, where layout and character length matter. Your translation partner will know how to handle tight character count limits while also maintain consistency with your preferred terminology, tone and branding.
Recommended translation workflow for Marketo
1. Export content cleanly
Rather than copying from the UI:
- Export emails and landing pages as HTML where possible (you can either do that for your translation partner or grant them access so they can handle it directly).
- Use clearly labelled source files per asset and language
When preparing these assets, naming conventions are your best friend. Use a standardised suffix (e.g., EM_2027_ProductLaunch_FR) so your translation team can easily identify which assets belong to which language folder within your Marketing Activities workspace.
- Lock source content before translation to avoid last‑minute changes
- Provide design assets in an editable format (like .idml) or better still, make assets editable directly in Marketo
This preserves structure and reduces formatting issues later.
2. Provide context (this is critical)
Translators work best when they know the:
- Target audience and market
- Campaign goal (lead gen, nurture, event, upsell)
- Brand tone (formal vs conversational)
- Character or layout constraints
Even a short briefing note dramatically improves quality.
3. Use a translation partner who understands marketing automation
Marketing content isn’t just about accuracy – it’s about conversion.
A specialist partner will:
- Preserve calls to action and intent
- Adapt tone culturally (not translate word‑for‑word)
- Flag content that may not work in a local market
- Handle HTML safely without breaking Marketo rendering
This is especially important for subject lines and buttons.
4. Re‑import and test in Marketo
Depending on how you work with your translation partner, they can take care of re-importing the translations or you can do it yourself:
- Re‑import content into Marketo
- Test emails in each language
- Verify forms, confirmation messages and thank‑you pages
Testing ensures all content displays correctly, logic behaves as expected and no mixed‑language or automation issues occur before launch.
Common pitfalls to avoid
- Translating before the campaign is finalised
- Ignoring subject line length differences
- Reusing translations without checking context
- Letting multiple agencies translate the same brand voice
- Using the translated assets before the translation agency has confirmed the re-importing process is complete
A single, consistent workflow saves time and budget.
Quick recap
Marketo is powerful, but it needs the right translation process around it to work globally.
With clean exports, proper context and a partner who understands both marketing language and marketing automation, multilingual campaigns become far easier to manage – and far more effective. And with a trusted partner by your side, you can even allow your chosen translation company to deal with your in-country teams for sign off – further shortening the time it takes for your campaigns to go live.
If you’d like help setting up a Marketo‑friendly translation workflow or want advice on the right mix of human or AI translation, feel free to get in touch.
