When you are finished with your image and ready to add this to your email template go to the ‘Generate Tags’. Dropping these tags into your email will pull through the live image at the moment of open.
Here we can customise the configuration of the tag. Initially this will be set with the values from the preview panel but we can change these here to reflect what we require in the campaign.
This might include your email providers merge tag syntax that will add different values to each individual customers tags, and therefore show different values in each of their live images. Alternatively, it might be changing configuration values to fit different promotions you are running.
This is useful where you want to use the same canvas template but with different data values. There is no need to duplicate the image as you can come in at anytime and generate new tags.
Changing the Configuration of the tag
Step 1: Configuration
First, under 'configuration' you can change all settings from your preview tag. Each data source has different options so refer to the guide on each data source.
You can add your email providers merge syntax here, but as of course this can mean we will show the fallback image in the preview window if no data can be found.
Step 2: URL Tracking
If your images will be clickable you can set the Google Analytics parameters here. You can also specify any custom tracking strongs to get added. In this instance you will need to specify the query string name and the value such as:
'querystringname=testing'
Multiple parameters can be added here by joining them with an ampersand (&).
Step 3: Customise Tag
Include Link
If you select this your HTML tags will include a link around each image based upon the settings you entered in 'Links & Fallback' in the editor.
Number of Items & First Item
For data sources where there are multiple results – such as Twitter with multiple tweets, Instagram with multiple thumbnails, weather with multiple days of forecasts and those data sources that can deliver multiple results.
Here the option to specify a number of items exists, and what number result to start at. This will provide you with multiple tags. It also allows you to mix and match with different images using the same data source.
For example using a weather data source you may wish to have today’s weather as one large detailed image, and then subsequent days as smaller images with less detail. To do this on the large image design we select 1 image, and a starting position as 1. On the smaller images tag page we state we want 3 images, but a starting position of 2.
Identifier Field
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. Using this allows us to accurately report how many unique opens and clicks you had.
To ensure the correct syntax is used here set the default tag in your account settings page.
The Tags
Once you have finished the configuration and customisation your tag is displayed in the box on the right of the page.
You can see the configuration values are included in the URL - if you are comfortable you can change these values in the tag rather than using the configuration panel each time.
Use the copy button highlighted to select the tag ready for pasting into your email template.
Preview
Your images are now displayed underneath tag. For tags with multiple images you can choose to display these on the same line (left to right) or stacked on top of each other using the dropdown.
If your tag contains merge syntax from your email provider it is unlikely to show true results at this stage, however you can preview different variations by going back to the canvas and changing the values in the preview panel.
Tips for adding tags to your email template:
1. Don’t load the image into your email marketing providers image library. Most email marketing platforms will load any images you add into their image library. While this is good for normal images as it means they are loaded fast it won’t work for live images. Instead add the tags into the source code of your template.
2. Making live images responsive on mobile devices. There are many ways each email marketing platform or editing solution generates code for making your email campaigns mobile responsive. We cannot provide code examples for all systems and recommend you consult the documentation of your email marketing platform or your email developer to get guidance on how to make images responsive. Many email providers will automatically resize images though, especially if you don’t add a width on the image. An alternative option where shrinking or stacking the images is not optimal on mobile is to create 2 different images, one for large screens, one for small and use the code defined in your responsive email template to switch between the 2.