Image: Optimizely Personalization suite product iconCreating a reusable email template

The Optimizely Digital Experience Platform contains many features to support you in your daily work. Depending on how your solution is set up, some features described in this documentation may not be available to you. Contact your system administrator to find out more. See Optimizely World for technical information.

Every campaign has one template comprised of the values in the Image, Text styles, and Advanced options. You can develop complex HTML and CSSStands for "Cascading Style Sheet"; a file type that defines the appearance and layout on the website, containing fonts, colors, and so on. CSS files separate the layout of website content from the content itself, making it easier to make layout changes on a website. (See also page template and page type.) coding in the options of a campaignPersonalization: Describes the rules for sending email that share a strategy and time frame while marketing a product or service., which generates the image in the preview.

You may have many campaigns, each having the same styling and code.

If you have the same styling and code in more than one campaign, you can manually change the options in each campaign. However, you can save these options to a named template so that other campaigns can use the same template. Making changes to a saved template applies to all campaigns that use the template, saving time and improving maintenance of your campaigns.

This topic shows how to:

  • create an email template independently from email campaigns.
  • assign the email template to new or existing campaigns.

Creating an email template from the template view

  1. Go to ConfigurationEmail Product RecommendationsReusable templates.
  2. Click Create a new template. A new template page appears:
    1. Enter a name for the new template.
    2. Specify values for Image, Text styles, and Advanced editable code (click Show advanced settings).

      Image: Reusable product information

    3. Click Save template. The template name appears in the template view.

      Image: Reusable templates view

Creating an email template from an existing campaign

  1. Go to ConfigurationEmail Product RecommendationsCampaigns and select a campaign from the list.
  2. Modify the campaign values.
  3. Select For this campaign only.

    Image: For this campaign only

    • For this campaign only. Default. The template is used in the current campaign only; keeps Image, Text styles, and Advanced editable code.
    • Reusable template. When selected, a drop-down list of reusable templates appears. Selecting a template overwrites the values with the saved template values. See Reusing a saved template
  4. Click Make reusable to save the template for use in other campaigns. A dialog box appears.
  5. Enter a name for the new template.

    Image: Template name

  6. Click Save. The radio button selection changes and the saved template appears in the Reusable template field (and in the Reusable templates view).

    Image: Saved template

    The Reusable templates view shows saved templates, the campaigns to which each template is assigned, and the modified date. You can Edit, Delete, and Copy each template.

    Image: Reusable templates view

    Deleting a template removes the template from the list; it does not delete the template values from the original campaign. For example, if you delete Autumn highlights, the campaign from which Autumn highlights was created retains its template values. Any other campaign that used Autumn highlights also retains it values.

Editing an email template

When you change and save a template, the changes are applied to each campaign that uses the template, which are listed in the Related campaigns column of the Reusable templates view. For example, if you modify Autumn highlights, the changes are applied to both the AUTUMN EMAIL CAMPAIGN and the Bulk Powders campaigns.

Image: Related campaigns

  1. Go to ConfigurationEmail Product Recommendations > Reusable templates.
  2. Select a template from the list. (Double-click the template name, or click Edit.)
  3. Make changes.
  4. Click Save template.

Reusing a saved template

To use a saved template for more than one campaign, do the following:

  1. Go to ConfigurationEmail Product RecommendationsCampaigns and select a campaign from the list.
  2. On the Style editor tab, select Reusable template . A drop-down menu appears where you can select a saved template. The selected template populates the current campaign fields. Image, Text styles and Advanced options are not editable (grayed out). The preview is based on the reusable template.

    Image: Assign template

    Selecting a reusable template from the drop-down list overwrite the field values, so if you want to return the current settings, save them to a named template before selecting a reusable template.

    Also, if you select a reusable template, then click For this campaign only, you can edit the values, which then becomes a new template that is unique to the current campaign; saving the campaign does not affect the previously selected reusable template. You can, however, create another reusable template by basing it on an existing named template. Saving the campaign does not change the reusable template.

    To edit a reusable template, go to ConfigurationEmail Product Recommendations > Reusable templates. See Editing an email template.

  3. To assign the selected template to the campaign, click Save campaign.

Previewing a product

You can enter or select a product in the Select product field. You can use the refCode or description to search. Selecting a product fills in other input boxes of the preview (Product title, Product price, and Custom attributes); you can select other values (such as material). The preview image shows how it will look when the product is recommended.

Image: Previewing a product