Knowledge Base

Displaying live tweets in your email campaign is a great way of attracting new followers for your social media accounts or for promoting social campaigns and competitions.

Tweets can be added from either a specific Twitter handle or based upon a search term or hashtag.

Each time a customer opens the email containing the live tweets image it is refreshed to show the latest tweets.

In this example we are going to create a simple image showing the latest tweets for the hashtag ‘#emailmarketing’ as shown below.

How to create a Twitter image:

Create a New Image

From the main menu select 'NEW IMAGE'.

You then need to give your image a name, followed by choosing the Twitter data source.

Select whether you want to use our template, upload a background image to work from or start with an empty canvas

In this example we are creating an image using an empty canvas. The Twitter data surce requires you to create a design for a single tweet, and then you can customise the tags later on to add as many tweets as required.

Settings Panel

The first thing to do when creating a new image is to adjust the settings in this panel.

Image Name

This is the name of the image you can change at anytime.

Labels

Labels are handy words you can assign to the image to help you search for it later.  Use the enter key to save each label and add as many as you wish.

Lock

Once you have finished editing the campaign and you are ready to send an email using this image we recommend locking the campaign from further changes to prevent accidental edits as these will show immediately in any images viewed by your customers.

Canvas Panel

Choose canvas size

The width and height of the canvas is set in pixels. You can change this at anytime. Changing the width will add or crop the canvas on the right hand side, while changing the height will add or crop from the bottom of the canvas.

The width of the canvas should be the same as the desired width of the image in your HTML email template.

We are going to change our canvas size to 600 pixels wide by 140 pixels high.

Background Colour

Choose a hex colour using the picker or by entering a value here. The background colour will now change. We are using the hex colour of #E8F5FD to match the look and feel of Twitter.

Links & Fallback Panel

Link

Enter the URL where you would like to take anyone clicking on the image. By default the {{url}} field is in place which will take you to the Twitter profile of the tweeter.

Fallback Image

In the event of no tweets being available for your given search you can choose an alternative static image. Leave this blank and Reignite will show a 1x1 transparent pixel.

Fallback Link

In the event of no tweets being available for your given search this link will be used on anyone clicking on the fallback image.

Preview Values

In the Preview panel we can add example values to allow us to see what the image will look like with values from a live Tweet while editing.

The Twitter data source takes these search terms:

Search Type
Search: This allows you to search for any phrase or a hashtag
Twitter Username: Enter the Twitter handle of an account to return their tweets (Don’t include the @)

For this example we are using ‘Search’ and have entered ‘#emailmarketing’.

You can also specify as to whether to allow replies or retweets in the search results.

Creating our image in the canvas

Next, we can start creating our image. 

First of all we want to add a white rectangle that our Tweet will sit on, still leaving a margin around the edges. We do this by using the red + button, selecting the star icon to choose a shape. Pick the square symbol to add a rectangle.

You can drag the corners of the rectangle to resize and position it as desired. To change the colour use the format men at the bottom of the screen, changing the colour on the 'Colour' tab:

Next we can add the username and tweet text.

To add the tweet text we click on the red + button and add a text layer.

Next right click on the new text layer and select ‘Insert Merge Field’.

This opens up the merge tag selection dialog giving us 2 options:

a. Pre-defined field – these are the data fields available in your data source
b. Custom field – these are fields from your data source you have customised. For example you may wish to insert the customers name, but do so in capitals. Once you have added this with the customised settings you can save it so it is available here.

For more information on merge fields read our separate guide.

For now we will simply choose ‘Pre-defined’ field, select ‘Text’ from the dropdown and then ‘Insert field’.

You will see the text in the layer has now been replaced with a tag of ‘{{text}}’.

Repeat the process on a new text layer for user which brings through the Twitter handle.

Position these layers as desired and change the text formatting using the menu at the bottom. In the example we are working on we have used the Oswald font on both, with the Twitter handle using size 16 and bold text. The actual tweet is size 14 font.

The final step is to add the profile picture of the Twitter account. This time when using the red + button we choose the image option:

You are then prompted to choose between a static image or dynamic image. We need to choose dynamic image.

Next we have to give the URL of our image. We use the jigsaw piece, select 'Image' from the pre-defined fields and click insert field:

Next we need to specify the preview image. The preview image is used when editing to give you a similar looking image that will help you craft your design rather than an ugly placeholder. For Twitter we recommend you choosing a square profile image, perhaps that of your own Twitter account.

And finally you are asked for a placeholder image. Placeholder images are used where the data source doesn't return a valid image and it allows you to put a replacement image where the image would otherwise be. Twitter will always return an image so choose 'No Fallback' followed by insert.

The image is added to your canvas. Twitter profile pictures can be of different shape rectangles so we recommend turning on 'Crop to fit' by right clicking on the image and choosing the tick box. The dynamic image will now always be cropped to fit inside the size of the preview image.

Once you have resized and postioned your image you should see this:

To see what this looks like with real data we can switch from edit to preview at the top of the canvas.

Now we can see the text is showing the value you have put in the preview panel.

In addition to the fields we added other data is available to add to your image:

Add the tags to your email template

Once you are happy with your image click on ‘Generate Tags’ top right to open up the dialog.

On the first open of this dialog you will see it has pulled into the ‘Configuration’ section your preview values.

In this example we don’t want to change these, but you can update these here each time you want to use the same image but pull through different type of tweets. This saves you from having to create many different images.

Next, we can customise the tag and specify how many tweets we want to add to the email. We do this by specifying this in ‘Items’. We can also change the result we start at. So, for example if you actually want the tags to start at the 2^nd tweet enter 2 here.

This can be used to have different looking tweets by creating different images, and then changing the start number on each tweet.

The identifier field is a piece of syntax you get from your email provider that identifies the individual opening the email. This could be the email address, or a customer ID. This enables Reignite to calculate unique impressions in reporting.

Under the ‘Your Tag’ you will now see the HTML to copy and paste to your email template – use the copy button provided to ensure the whole tag is copied correctly.

Depending on how your email template is coded you may need to paste each image into individual areas of your template rather than all in one block or read our detailed guide on adding tags to your email template here.

And that’s it. That is how to add live tweets to your emails.