Name: Creating Emails with the Visual Content Editor in SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement
Uploaded: 2023-8-4
Duration: 611 s
Description: In this video, you will learn how to create email campaigns in the Emarsys Platform using the Block-Based Editor, also known as Visual Content Editor (VCE).

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<div><div>In this video, you will learn how to create email campaigns in the Emarsys Platform using the Block-Based Editor, also known as Visual Content Editor (VCE). </div></div>

Creating Emails with the Visual Content Editor in SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement

Hello! In this session we'll be looking at how to create email campaigns in the SAP Emarsys Platform using the Visual Content Editor, VCE. VCE is a flexible, simple to use email content editor that uses block based-templates for fast email creation. Our use case is creating a welcome email for new subscribers. Let’s start the email creation with templates to make a great-looking campaign. Templates provide building blocks and design basics. When you update them, you can apply the changes to all the related email campaigns. You can start creating an email campaign via Channels > Email Campaigns where you click “Create Email” and select “Block-based Email”, or via Content > Block based templates. You can create your own templates, we can create them for you, or you can copy a pre-built one. Then just hover over the template and click “Create campaign”. The workflow steps help you to finish and send your campaign. On Email Settings I define: The internal name of the email campaign. The language If you include the Emarsys functions “show online version” or “unsubscribe”. This is independent from the campaign language when you use multi-language campaigns. The Email category - makes analysis and segmentation easier. I’ll create the category ‘Welcome’. The recipient source You can choose a segment, contact lists, combined segments, API and others. I leave this empty, since I will use my email campaign in an Automation Center program. To do that, I save my changes, open my program, click on the corresponding node, and simply select the campaign from the list. Once the Email Settings are ready, I can move on to the 2nd Step: Content Creation. On the left you have several tabs to manage your content. In the Blocks tab you can drag and drop your blocks and edit them in the Live Preview. The blocks are like Lego pieces, they help you build your email to contain images, text and other elements, like product blocks. Let's see how to manage the blocks from the template in this email. For my welcome email I will delete this block here and add a different one: a text block to introduce the brand including a welcome voucher for the new subscriber. Let’s check out the toolbar functions that apply to the entire block: Style settings to change the appearance of the block Optional content to show or hide elements within the block Predict product recommendations We will talk about these later. Hide or show on mobile Block targeting is important, if you wish to show, or hide certain blocks to certain contacts. Product source to include personalized product recommendations depending on a recommendation rule or product set. We’ll cover this in our Advanced VCE video. You can remove or duplicate the block if you want, you can reset it to its original layout, and you can move it. Let’s edit this text block. Here I have the options to format the text, add Conditional text or a URL, Personalization, or an Emarsys Scripting Language snippet for further personalization. I say “hello” and add the first name with the personalization token. Personalization tokens are placeholders for contact data fields. For any missing first names I add a fallback text. Also, I want to insert a unique voucher code. First, I need to create a voucher pool on the Omnichannel Voucher Management page. I name my pool and upload a simple one-column list of codes, saved in TXT or CSV format. I want my new subscribers to receive a voucher only once, so I won’t select this option. I add a text to be displayed if the pool is empty and set a reminder for when codes are running low. Let’s save that and go back to the welcome email. On the Personalization tab I create a custom token for my welcome voucher pool and add it to my email. I could use this voucher in a Mobile Wallet Campaign and link the Pass Campaign's token in this email. Now, let’s add some product recommendations. You can do this in two ways: by predefined Predict recommendations or by your own rules. In this video we focus on Predict recommendations. You can use Predict recommendations in a block with image placeholders - Ideally with two or more columns. For my welcome email I want to include recently browsed and popular products. When I click on this icon, the Widget Editor pops up and lets you configure the Predict recommendations. You can decide which product catalog fields to display and which logic to use. I choose ‘Mail Personal’ and click Insert. This will only show as many products as image placeholders my block includes. I save my changes as a draft. You can always undo and redo any previous actions. Let's have a look at the other tabs: On Email Basics you define the “Subject line”, “From name” and “From email address”, these fields are all mandatory. The “Subject line” can be personalized, and you can use conditional text as well. I add my subject line and a conditional text by displaying ‘Friend’ if the “First Name” field is empty. Otherwise, the contact’s first name will be used. The “From name” field can be personalized and can include conditional content as well. If your contact database includes a field for a preferred store, you can send the email in the name of the store. I add mine. If you want to handle replies on your side, you can insert the “From (email address)” manually. Or, if you have it set up in your account, you can use the Emarsys reply management and select the address from the dropdown. I’ll select an existing one. Preview text is important and can increase your open rates. In this case it will be ‘We have a voucher for you!’. If you don’t set the preview text, depending on the email client, the first few characters of your message content will be shown. If you don’t have the unsubscribe link in your template already you can insert a generic one here. Same applies to the show online version link. Now, let’s take a look at the remaining tabs: On Links, you can see, and edit all the links found in your email message. Now I add a link to the welcome image and set it tracked, which will be important for reporting. Recent media shows all the images that you’ve recently used in campaigns. I add this image to the message body. Style Settings allows you to change the look of the email, without affecting the original template settings. They are based on variables defined in the template. I change the background color of my email. Versions are important for A/B Testing campaigns. I could create different email versions to test their performance. On the Languages tab you can add languages to the email campaigns, so your contacts will receive their appropriate language version. Please refer to our documentation for details on this. Finally, on the Personalization tab, you can create and use custom tokens as we saw earlier. I can compare my email on desktop and mobile devices. Click on the device view selector to further edit your content in the different views. Inbox Preview lets you see how your email campaigns will be displayed in the most popular email clients, such as Gmail or Outlook. Now that I have finished creating the content, I use the Contact Preview function to check how my email looks. I'm happy with it. So now, I click Finish editing to save my changes and run the necessary background operations before testing and launching. Until launching you can always go back to edit your campaign, even after you press “finish editing”. I click “Testmail” and choose the recipient source. If you want to test your personalization, select Contact list or Segment. Click “Send” to use your Testmail. The Campaign Check analyzes your email campaign and provides information about elements of your content, to help you prevent deliverability issues. If you don’t want to use the campaign in an Automation program, you can schedule and launch it from VCE as well, on the Scheduling page. If you have one version only, your launch list will be calculated automatically and appear here. You can also turn on the Send Time Optimization feature to calculate the best time of the day to send the email to each recipient. With Emarsys’ advanced scheduling capabilities, you can send different versions of your email to see which one performs better. First you select a percentage of your launch list for your first test, give it a name and manually select which version you want to launch and when. Repeat the process for as many tests as you want to launch, you can only test up to 80% of your list.  Once all your tests are scheduled, do the same for the Final Mailing, but this time switch to Automatically and choose how you want us to calculate the best performing version that should be launched for all the remaining contacts. Allow 3 to 4 hours after your tests to gather responses to calculate. Once you have launched your campaign separately, or your Automation program is active, you can navigate back to the email campaigns overview page. By default, here you can see a list of the 200 most recent email campaigns currently in the system, with the one you just created on the top. You can delete, preview, copy and edit your emails. If you created language versions, you can check them here and, since this campaign is connected to an Automation program, you can click this icon, taking you to the program containing the email. If your email is launched, click on this icon to check the reporting. So, that would sum up the most important functions of the Visual Content Editor. I hope you enjoyed today's session.