In this video, I will explain how to configure and use a delivery template. Marketing departments produce delivery templates to standardize the creative look and feel in order to be quicker in executing and launching campaigns. A template can systematically include typologies, sender and reply to addresses, and basic personalization blocks, such as mirror page and unsubscription links. It can also include content, a company logo, or a signature, and other delivery properties, such as resource validity, patch quantities, et cetera. Today I will demonstrate configuring a template for an ad hoc delivery. In other words, a delivery that only occurs once.

To create a new delivery template, first navigate through the Explorer Tree View Folders, Resources, Templates, and Delivery template. Now let’s compare the default out-of-the-box templates to a custom template you can create.

There are several out-of-the-box templates available, depending on the packages you have installed. For example, Direct Mail, Email, SMS, and Mobile push notification, as well as an Other template, which is a blank template, for new channels to be configured in the campaign instance.

The default delivery templates serve as a canvas to help you create your own branded deliveries.

Let’s create the default email template features and properties. The default email template already populates the Label, Internal name, and if you navigate to Properties, the folder location to store the deliveries made using this template. These settings can be manually updated as well.

However, you can also create a custom email template that is configured for your business or your specific campaign.

Create a new template by duplicating the out-of-the-box Email template. This way the routing and execution folders match the channel for which you want to create a template.

Add a delivery label. The Internal name should be kept as is or should be updated with a common standard that groups templates together by line of business, an automated process, or that refer to a type of messaging, such as promotional, transactional, or operational.

As a general rule, all free form field input should be short and descriptive due to character limitations. A naming convention should be discussed and formalized prior to creating campaigns.

Within email parameters, click on the underlined From link to change the Sender address, Sender name, Reply address, and Reply name according to campaign requirements.

Most often, this information is static and specific to a line of business or email type.

Click on the underlying To link, within Email parameters, to define the Main target, the Target of the proofs, Exclusions, Control group, and Seed addresses. In the Main target tab, you can define the target source, although the most common option is to target a population resulting from upstream targeting.

The Target of the proofs tab can define a list of recipients to whom you will send proofs out for review. There are four options for how you can define the Target of the proofs.

Definition of a specific proof target to select a target from campaign recipients. Substitution of the address to select specific profiles where you can update the email addresses to a specific proof email address. Seed addresses where you can select a recipient from the seed table, or Specific target and Seed addresses where you can select proof recipients and seed addresses from the campaign recipients.

The default Exclusions is to exclude duplicate addresses, recipients who opted out, and recipients who are quarantined. You can uncheck any of these by clicking Edit to remove the exclusion, or you can add a filtering rule to add more exclusions.

Control group will allow you to set a control group specific to the delivery.

Lastly, the Seed addresses tab will allow you to add seed addresses to the delivery.

You can attach documents, like an account statement, for example. You can add, personalize, or append additional information, such as a date string in the subject line.

To do so, click on the underlying Subject, then click on the icon on the far right of the window that popped up, then click Add current date, and, finally, select a format for the date.

To design the email delivery template, it is recommended to design the HTML components in an external design tool, like Dreamweaver, and upload the files to ACC via an external source, like the AEM Connector, an SFTP, or a desktop. To upload HTML Creative, click the folder icon and select the HTML file you would like to upload.

Once you select the HTML file, the tool will ask you if you wish to publish the images. Click Yes to add them to the tool. Wait for the files to be uploaded to the server.

Once finished, click Close.

Review the HTML you just loaded, and make sure it includes a mirror page, an unsubscribe link.

If you need to make edits to the Creative, we recommend making the updates directly in the Source tab rather than making your edits directly in the HTML tab.

We can easily generate a plain text version of the email by selecting the Import HTML icon in the Text Content tab.

At the bottom of the HTML Content tab, you can view the template URLs by checking the Display URL’s box. You can view the link, the link label, required to successfully send emails in ACC, and a link category. You can also display HTML diagnostics and make corrections accordingly.

In the Preview tab, at the bottom of the template, you can also preview the Creative with personalization by selecting a random recipient in the Test personalization button.

We’ve now reviewed how to create and configure an ad hoc email template in the delivery template, the resources folder, using the default email template as a canvas. -