The new Adobe Marketo Engage Email Designer went through major upgrades since it's launch in Feb 2025 - bringing significant changes we continued to test its capabilities and compatibility with Digesto. Below are the most recent findings & Digesto compatibility review.
Compatibility Status: The new Editor is fully compatible with Digesto and mature enough that we recommend considering a progressive migration from legacy template to the new one. Digesto template are still relying on the 2.0 Email editor but we plan on introducing new templates in future releases.
The new Marketo Engage Email Designer, initially limited upon its 2025 release (see our initial review), has evolved with steady improvements. The most significant uplift for Jeto clients to use the new editor is the ability to create and edit Marketo Email Templates easily from a drag & drop interface – which removes the dependency and reduces the need for custom (and costly) template coding.
The good news is: while some Marketo API bugs and limitations remain, we are confident in our ability to support emails sourced from the new editor in Jeto. At this point we cannot confirm if module deletion\controls will be in scope with the initial release, but our team will keep working on solutions to control Fragments in future releases.
The upcoming addition of REST API support (API support for the new email editor is initially planned for Q2 2026) is a crucial milestone, but still represent an integration challenge due to backward compatibility issues
First, here are highlights of the major improvements to the editor since its release.
February 2025 Initial launch of the drag-and-drop designer with fragments and content locking. Initial limitations included a requirement for Adobe IMS and limited program support (Email only). The API was also not publicly exposed.
March 2025 The designer became available for use in Engagement, Default, and Event Programs, expanding its core usability.
April 2025 Improved asset management was added, allowing users to move emails between programs and delete programs containing new designer emails.
May 2025 Enabled cloning of new designer emails, enhanced personalization with all standard Marketo tokens, and integrated with Adobe GenStudio for generative AI content creation (pad add-on).
July 2025 Introduced “Conditional Content” for dynamic email personalization, critical API infrastructure improvements add the ability custom CSS was introduced, gives users more control over design, bridging the gap between a pure WYSIWYG tool and the full code-based control of the classic editor.
August 2025 Significant bug fixes and performance enhancements were released, including faster email preview load times and a fix for template rendering and content locking issues.
September 2025 Introduced new REST API endpoints specifically for the new designer, enabling programmatic creation and management of emails. The scripting language for Conditional Content was also switched back from Handlebars to Velocity, a more familiar language for Marketo users.
November 2025 Email Designer at parity with the classic editor on the shared capabilities (templates, programs, previews, conditional content, analytics reporting, etc.) and A/B testing support.
January 2026 Folders for emails/templates/Fragments; Fragment thumbnails; multi-level bullets; conditional content parity with old Dynamic Content; AI Assistant accepts brand assets in-prompt.
February 2026 Email Designer REST API (the long-missing piece); Folder Actions parity (share, archive, cross-workspace, drag-drop); AI image gen adds Nano Banana alongside Firefly. Manage Brands beta + Brand Quality Checker announced.
March 2026 Outlook rendering fix with new "Expert mode" for minor HTML/CSS edits; Quick Actions parity (Duplicate, Delete, Move, Create/Edit Draft); Picklist Management.
May 2026 Conditional Content now works inside Fragments.
Throughout the releases, the documentation has been improved including a new Experience League article with Feature Comparison – Old editor vs New Designer and an updated Email Designer Knowledge Base.
Our Experiments
Our approach for testing was simple:
Step 1- Build Marketo program template with new emails
1 Build a new Email Template from the library
2 Create a test program
3 Build 2 emails
a) one from a template
b) one directly from the email editor (no template)
4 Tokenize the program and emails
Step 2- Create a Digest
1 Create a new Digest and generate the preview
2 Send out a test
3 Schedule an automated delivery
Test Results: Program creation and content update during test and scheduled delivery works as expected.
Over 12 months post-launch, the new Marketo Email Designer has evolved into a robust tool. Significant advancements, including conditional content, custom CSS, and improved API infrastructure (although not yet officially supported), have largely shortened the gap with the classic editor, particularly benefiting organizations embracing new template editing and customization.
While limitations such as possible tables breaks in Outlook and Gmail clipping, reminiscent challenges to migrate your templates, and residual API development persist, we recommend that you introduce it gradually with a particular focus on testing tables that could break in Outlook and trigger Gmail clipping.