Advanced Editor

To enter content into the Advanced Editor:

1. On the Campaign screen, click the content tab.

2. Optionally, if you want more space on the screen to build your message, click the "Expand Advanced Editor" button. The system collapses several of the user interface elements in order to make the code editor larger. Click this button again to revert back.

3. Type in HTML code or text, or copy-and-paste this material from some other tool.

If you're including links within your message content, you can optionally provide a friendly name for the link, right from within the HTML editor. Friendly names makes it easier to read the Campaign reports that track link usage (friendly link names can also be defined on the Link Library).

• Within HTML content, add a name attribute ("data-link-name") to the anchor tag. For example:

<a data-link-name="Cheetah Digital home" href="http://www.cheetahdigital.com">Cheetah Digital Home Page</a>  

• Within either HTML or Text content, use a new URL merge tag to specify the friendly name. For example:

{@Cheetah Digital home|http://www.cheetahdigital.com@}

4. In the Tool Bar, click save.

Note: While editing your message content, if another user has this same Campaign open at the same time, and he or she modifies and saves the Campaign, the system will alert you with a "Changes Detected" pop-up window. This window tells you that changes have been made, and by whom. If you want to discard your local changes and reload the screen to show the other user's version of the Campaign content, click reload email campaign. Or, if you want to overwrite the other person's changes, click ignore changes.

If changes were made to BOTH the message content and a Content Block, the system allows you to perform a "bulk" reload or ignore. If you want to ignore all the changes across all the modified items, simply click ignore changes. If you want to reload the screen to show all the changes across all the modified items, you must first place a check mark next to "Reload Email Campaign and remaining items," then click reload email campaign.

The Advanced Editor provides several other options and editing tools for providing the desired content, as described below.

Word Wrap

Word-wrapping can make it easier to read the Advanced Editor so you don't have to scroll to the right. By default, word-wrapping is turned off. If you want to turn it on, flip the "Wrap" toggle switch to "On."

Find and Replace

To search for a text string within the Advanced Editor:

1. Click the Find & Replace button (magnifying glass icon). The Find & Replace pop-up window is displayed.

2. In the "Find" field, enter the text string.

3. Optionally, if you want to match the case of your text string, place a check mark in the "Match Case" check box.

4. To highlight the first instance of the text string, click find. Then click find next to move to the next instance. Or, to highlight all instances of the text string, click find all.

5. When finished, click the "X" icon to close the Find & Replace pop-up window.

To replace a text string with another text string within the Advanced Editor:

1. Click the Find & Replace button (magnifying glass icon). The Find & Replace pop-up window is displayed.

2. In the "Find" field, enter the text string that you want to replace.

3. Optionally, if you want to match the case of your text string, place a check mark in the "Match Case" check box.

4. In the "Replace" field, enter the new text string.

5. To highlight the first instance of the text string, click find. If you want to replace this instance, click replace. Then click find next to move to the next instance. Or, if you want to replace all instances of that text string, click replace all.

6. When finished, click the "X" icon to close the Find & Replace pop-up window.

Generate Text from HTML

This time saving option helps you to generate plain text content from the corresponding HTML option content. 

HTML Tools

If you're not proficient with HTML code, the platform offers several tools to assist with the content creation process.

WYSIWYG Editor

The WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is intended for non-technical users. This editor is similar to a word processor, and provides a tool bar with common functions, such as fonts, tables, images, and typefaces. The platform will automatically convert this content into HTML.

By default, the platform displays the HTML code editor. To switch from the HTML code editor to the WYSIWYG editor, click wysiwyg. To toggle back to the HTML editor, click code.

CSS-to-Inline Converter

Some consumer email applications don't support the use of a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) when displaying HTML content. Messaging provides a built-in tool that will convert CSS styles into "inline" HTML tags. To use this converter:

1. Select the "HTML: Email" tab.

2. Click css to inline.

Personalization fields are used to populate a portion of your message with content pulled from the Campaign's data source. For example, instead of "Dear Customer" as a greeting, you could replace the word "Customer" with the customer's actual first name.

Note: If you're building content that uses the Engagement Data Platform (EDP) as the data source, only the Attributes and Dynamic Attributes tagged as "use in Messaging" are available for personalization. Please see the EDP and Loyalty Data Manager for more details on this process.

New Personalization Field

To add a new personalization field to your message content:

1. Within the text editor, position your cursor where you want to insert the personalization field.

2. Click the "Personalization & Library" bar along the right-hand side of the screen to expand the Personalization Pane. Within this panel, the available fields are organized into different expandable / collapsible groups. For example, you'll see a section for your Campaign source table. You may see another section called "Joins" if your source table is joined to another table, or a section called "System Fields" that contains system-generated fields, or a section called "Metadata Fields" that contains any custom Metadata fields. If you're building a Campaign that uses EDP as the data source, you'll see a section called "Dynamic Attributes" if you have Dynamic Attributes defined and enabled for use. 

3. Within the Personalization Pane, expand the desired group to find the personalization field you want to use. Optionally, you can sort the personalization fields alphabetically (by default, the fields are sorted based on the field sequence defined for this table on the Tables screen). You can also use the search function within the Personalization Pane to search for a particular text string within the field name.

4. Double-click on the personalization field name (or, optionally, you can drag the desired personalization field from the Personalization Pane, and drop it into the text editor at the desired insert location). An "Insert Field Value" pop-up window is displayed.

5. Optionally, enter a default value for this personalization field in the "Default" text box. The default value is used if a record doesn't have a valid value in the field being used to personalize the message.

6. Optionally select a formatting mask from the "Formatter" drop-down menu. The formatting mask is used to control the appearance of the text in the personalization field. For example, you can format date fields as "mm/dd/yyyy." The system includes formatting masks for dollar amounts, dates, numbers, and URLs. You can also use a formatting mask to truncate or encode the personalization field.

7. If you selected a "Number" format or a "Money" format in step 6, the system displays a "Locale" drop-down menu. This menu allows you to define the formatting and presentation of the number or money value, based on your location. The Locale from your User Profile will be selected by default, but you can optionally select a different Locale from the drop-down menu.

8. Click ok. The system creates a new Merge Symbol for this personalization field, and inserts it at the current cursor position (or at the drop location if you drag-and-dropped the item from the Personalization Pane).

A Merge Symbol is a textual representation of the personalization field, consisting of the field name enclosed in double-brackets. For example: {(first_name)}. If you defined a default value, this value is also displayed within the Merge Symbol. For example: {(first_name|Customer)}. If you selected a formatting mask, the formatting mask is displayed within the Merge Symbol using a special code. For example, the "mm/dd/yy" date field format mask is represented by the code: "d:d." Therefore, the Merge Symbol for this field would be: "{(date_field||d:d)}."

Note: If adding EDP Dynamic Attributes, the platform automatically adds the prefix "ccda" to the Merge Symbol name. For example: {(cdda_calculate_age)}.This prefix is intended to prevent potential issues where a Dynamic Attribute and a regular Attribute have the same name.   

Note: If you have the Loyalty Profile Stream feature enabled and setup to use, you can personalize your campaign by including the imported Loyalty Attributes, Preferences and Metrics which is continually streaming, updating your recipient data any time a value changes in Marigold Loyalty. 

 

Reuse a Personalization Field

Once you add a personalization field to the message content, the Merge Symbol for that field is added to the "Included Items" section of the Personalization Pane. This section allows you to conveniently find and reuse a personalization field without having to search for it every time.

Note: After adding a Personalization Field to the message content, you may need to close / reopen the Personalization Pane in order to "refresh" the values listed within the "Included Items" section.

To reuse a personalization field that you previously added to the message content:

1. Within the text editor, position your cursor where you want to insert the personalization field.

2. Click the "Personalization & Library" bar along the right-hand side of the screen to expand the Personalization Pane.

3. Within the "Included Items" section of the Personalization Pane, double-click on the desired Merge Symbol. The system inserts the Merge Symbol at the current cursor position. Or, optionally, you can drag the desired Merge Symbol from the "Included Items" section, and drop it into the text editor at the desired insert location

Note: If you remove all instances of a personalization field, the platform will remove its Merge Symbol from the "Included Items" section.

 

The "open pixel" is a one-pixel-width image that the platform automatically inserts into email message content, for the purposes of being able to track recipient Opens. By default, the platform inserts the open pixel at the very top of the message. Optionally, if this default placement causes issues with the alignment or formatting of your content, you can adjust the open pixel to a different placement within the message.

Note: This feature is available only within the Advanced Editor on the Campaign Details screen. This feature is not available within other assets that use the Advanced Editor, such as Content Blocks. 

To insert the open pixel into your email message:

1. Within the text editor, position your cursor where you want to insert the open pixel.

2. Click the "Personalization & Library" bar along the right-hand side of the screen to expand the Personalization Pane.  

3. Within the Personalization Pane, expand the System Fields group.

4. Double-click on Open Pixel (or, optionally, you can drag Open Pixel from the Personalization Pane, and drop it into the text editor at the desired insert location).

5. The system creates a new Merge Symbol named {(open_pixel)}, and inserts it at the current cursor position (or at the drop location if you drag-and-dropped the item from the Personalization Pane). 

Note: If you insert multiple open pixels into the message content, the platform will utilize the first instance, and ignore the others.