Creating an Email Manager Deployment

Many CX use cases require emails to be sent out and many of our customers use our Email Manager solution. We have an integration with Email Manager directly from Rule Designer.

To setup an email campaign through Email Manager select “Email Manager Tile”.

The Email Manager Configuration screen opens. This screen provides a way to gather all the elements required for an email send.

We provide two ways of sending Email Manager emails through Rule Designer:

Transactional - Fast and one-off. This is for transactional emails only and should not be used for marketing emails. These email campaigns go out quickly but they circumvent the preferences and unsubscribes that are required for marketing campaigns.
Marketing - Slightly slower but will honour preferences and health scores held in email manager if the correct primary key is selected.

The initial setup and creative selection is identical in both scenarios. Let’s cover those first.

Account link

Select your Account Link: In essence this tells us which user in which account in which Email Manager area you want to send from. This will have previously been configured by Alterian as part of your account onboarding. You may only have a single account link. In this scenario we will automcatically select this for you.

Click next when an account link has been selected.

Creative

We’ve skipped deployment tab and we will revisit that below. Both Account Link and Creative are the same for both deployment types.

Creative Selector: Provides a list of all the creatives available from your chosen account. You can search by name or scroll through to find the creative of interest. Once you have the creative you are interested in, select it so you can select the Templates within the creative.

HTML / Text Template: An Email Manager creative can have multiple HTML and Text templates within it. We now know the creative you are interested in and this choice has made this selection active. The HTML Template is now available. Use the dropdown to select the Template you want to send.

If the Creative has a Text part this can also be selected. If HTML and text templates are selected we will send a multipart message. That is, both are sent but only one will be shown with the recieving system choosing which option to show to the recipient.

Optionally you can choose to only send a Text template.

HTML / Text Preview : Now a Creative and the Template within it have been selected you can review them to ensure they match your requirements. Click on HTML Preview and / or Text preview to review the Templates you are going to send.

Note where you are adding variables into the creative. You will be mapping these values later. In the example below you can see “preheader” and “name” are added as variables in the underlying Template.

The preview of the email is provided to allow users to understand whether the creative selected is the correct one. It has not been designed to provide a creative testing function. Links will not work in the HTML / Text preview screens but will when sent or in Email Manager or Creative Builder.

Deployment

Select a Sender Email Address : Select the Sender Email Address you want to send the email from. These are taken directly from your account and will have been configured to achieve the best deliverability. This will be used as the email “From address” which will show in the email client.

If you are sending Transactional email you can now select done. Your configuration is complete.

If you have selected to send Marketing emails more configuration is required.

Primary Key and Primary Key Field

The account link allows us to understand the account that is sending the emails. This allows us to understand the Primary Keys in your Email Manager account you could use.

The primary key drop down will query your email manager solution to provide all the primary keys available. Select the one you would like to use.

Remember, the permissions and opt outs in email manager are linked to the primary key chosen so be very careful to choose the correct one.

Once you have selected the Primary key choose the field in the flow of the Rule that provides this value. In the example above the Primary key in email manager is “email” and I have a EmailAddress field in the flow of the rule. I’ll use the “Email Address” field to flow into the “Email” primary key and the permissions held against the “Email” primary key will be honoured.

How fast do the emails go out? The Transactional emails go out very quickly as we do not do any checks on preferences or email address health scores. The Marketing emails are bundled up and are sent after 300 seconds or when 3000 emails are waiting to go.

If you have an Email Manager account with Alterian please contact the Alterian support team to start the integration process.

Mapping Email Manager Fields

In previous versions, field mapping took place using the standard field mapping screen. Now, we have implemented specialized variable mapping functionality within the template. This improvement allows us to achieve functionality that was not possible before. Emails set up in this manner in earlier versions will still function. To utilize the highlighted new functionality, you must delete and recreate the Email Manager Integration.

Now that you've selected your creative and templates, we have identified the necessary fields for a successful deployment. Some of these fields are obligatory for all email sends, while others are optional or custom fields derived from the chosen templates.

The default mandatory fields include:

Sender Alias
Recipient Email
Recipient Alias
Email Subject

Additional custom fields can be configured in email manager as defaults. You can determine their requirement status through the "required" flag.

Fields marked as required must be accurately mapped to ensure the successful email sends. Consequently, selecting "no mapping" for these fields is not permissible.

The sender alias and subject line may derive from a field or more commonly from a constant.

Recipient Email and Recipient Alias are typically set through field mapping.

In field mapping, a field can only be mapped once. Conversely, in variable mapping, the same field can be mapped multiple times. In the example below, you can see that the EmailAddress field is associated with both Recipient Email and Recipient Alias.

Where a default value exists for the Variable it’s shown in this screen. These default values are only editable in Email Manager but will be overwritten by anything added in this screen.