Create an Email Experience

Open-Time Email allows you to connect with your customers through emails that are personalized at the time the recipient opens it.

The email experience created in this documentation inserts a special offer image for recipients who open the email on an iPhone and who are located in Philadelphia or New York City. All other visitors receive the standard email.

Follow these steps to create an email experience.

  1. Click EXPERIENCES in the top navigation bar and then select Email.

    Callout of the Email option in the EXPERIENCES menu in the top navigation bar

  2. Click CREATE EMAIL EXPERIENCE.

    Callout of the CREATE EMAIL EXPERIENCE button on the Email Experiences list page

  3. Specify what content, if any, recipients outside of the target audience see when they open the email. Click either UPLOAD IMAGE to insert a separate default image, or click SHOW NOTHING to keep the original email template unchanged. For this example experience, recipients not in the target audiences won't see a separate default image.

    Callout of the UPLOAD IMAGE button and the SHOW NOTHING button

  4. If necessary, click Edit Dynamic Content Eligibility and then toggle the eligibility setting for recipients who use the Gmail site or the Gmail iOS or Android apps and the eligibility setting for recipients who open the email on a cellular network. See Dynamic Content Eligibility for more information.

    Animated demonstration of a user clicking 'Edit Dynamic Content Eligibility' and view the Edit Dynamic Targeting Eligibility modal

  5. Select the target(s) for the dynamic content from Target based on.

    Multiple targets (such as City and Device Platform) added to an experience are treated as "and" statements, which means the dynamic content is only served to recipients that match all the target qualifications.

    Callout of the City target and Device Type target joined by 'and'

  6. Click ADD DYNAMIC CONTENT and then click either IMAGE or COUNTDOWN TIMER, depending on which content you want to show the targeted email recipients.

    If you choose to use a countdown timer in the email experience, see Add a Countdown Timer to an Email Experience for the steps to configure that content.

    Animated demonstration of a user clicking the ADD DYNAMIC CONTENT button and viewing the IMAGE and COUNTDOWN TIMER buttons

  7. If you clicked IMAGE, click CHOOSE to select an image from Content Manager; click UPLOAD to upload an image into the experience and into Content Manager; or click GENERATE to create an image placeholder.

    Callout of the IMAGE, UPLOAD, and GENERATE buttons in the Select Layered Content modal

  8. Input a destination site to which the targeted recipient is redirected after clicking the image. Click ADD CLICK URL, enter the URL for the link, and then click the green checkmark.

    You can use a static page for the click URL. You can also use a URL that contains query strings to use third-party analytics platforms and other tracking tools. See Use Pass-Through Parameters in an Email Experience for more information.

    Animated demonstration of a user clicking the ADD CLICK URL button, typing a URL into the field, and then clicking the green checkmark to save the URL

  9. Configure the specific target for the dynamic content. For this demonstration, the City and Device Platform targets are specified to target Philadelphia and iPhone, respectively.

    Animated demonstration of a user typing 'Philadelphia' into the City field and then selecting 'Philadelphia, PA,' and then selecting iPhone from the Device Platform selector

  10. If necessary, repeat steps 7 through 9 to add a dynamic content entry for each distinct target in the experience. The example experience requires a second dynamic content entry with the same image but configured for recipients in New York City viewing the email on an iPhone.

    Callout of Dynamic Content 2 that has New York City and iPhone selected as the targets

  11. If you want to configure the experience test the personalization against a control group, then select Make this a test and then adjust the slider to determine what percentage of the qualifying recipients sees the dynamic content. The group of subscribers who match the target for a dynamic variant here are split by the testing percentage. In the example experience, 70% of subscribers from Philadelphia or New York who are viewing the email on an iPhone receive the experiment and 30% of them receive the control.

    Animated demonstration of a user selecting 'Make this a test' and then adjusting the slider so that 70 percent of the qualifying recipients see the dynamic content and 30 percent of the qualifying recipients do not

Click PREVIEW HTML to generate a test snippet to preview each piece of dynamic content. Paste the snippet into your email template to send a test email and preview the content. See Preview an Email Experience for more information.

When you're satisfied with the experience configuration, click GENERATE HTML FOR EXACT TARGET. The Final HTML for this Experience modal contains the HTML snippet written for use in your email service provider. Paste the snippet into the source code of your email template exactly where you want the dynamic content to appear. See Send an Email Experience for more information.

View of the 'Final HTML for this Experience' modal, with a callout of the HTML snippet

When you include the experience's HTML in an email and send it out, Monetate then tracks every time a recipient opens the email as well as every time a recipient clicks the dynamic content.

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