Content Syndication

About this Guide

This document provides conceptual and procedural information about the ExactTarget content syndication feature.  

Introduction to Content Syndication

When you think of creating an email, you probably think of entering content by typing or using cut-and-paste. Content syndication allows you to bypass typing in the email and include content in your emails directly from an outside source. You specify a path to the content in place of the content itself, and the program gets the content at that path and includes it in your email automatically.

For example, you can include the latest entry in your company blog in your email by specifying the path to the latest entry. The program uses the path you entered to get the latest entry at the time of the email send and include it in your email.

Content syndication is designed to help you integrate your CMS or CRM system with emails built and sent with the ExactTarget application. You can use content syndication to get content from any web site or your CMS into the body of your emails. Additionally, you can use the content syndication features to notify your system that an activity has completed in ExactTarget. You can use content syndication through the ExactTarget online application or by using the calls in the ExactTarget API. ExactTarget AMP Web Services currently does not support content syndication.

Content Syndication in the ExactTarget Online Application

The ExactTarget online application allows users to use a web-based user interface to create content for email campaigns, manage subscriber lists, test and send messages, and perform tracking analysis on each campaign.

You use content syndication in the online application as part of the process of creating an email. See the ExactTarget online help available through the application for more information about creating emails.

Use these steps to use content syndication within an email:

1. Create or open the email in which to add the syndicated content.
2. Click Create or Modify in the content area in which to add the syndicated content.
3. If you're creating new content, select the orientation of the content area.

You can choose any orientation when syndicating content, but the syndicated content is considered to be text only. If you choose an orientation that includes an image, the image should come from the image library. So, for example, you can include a logo from the image library at the top of the content area and have syndicated content appear below it.

4. If you've selected an orientation that includes an image, select the image.
5. Select External Content. from the Insert menu on the text editing screen.

The Insert External Content window appears.

6. Enter the complete URL (including http://) of the external content that you want the program to populate in the content area.

You can link to anything that you could normally access via HTTP. You can click the personalization button to use personalization as part of the URL.

7. Click the radio button to indicate when to retrieve the content:

• Retrieve content immediately gets the content from the path you provided when you click OK. Use this feature to get the content as it appears at the path right now. You cannot include personalization in the URL if you select this option. You can edit and preview the syndicated content in the regular HTML and text preview.
• Retrieve content when email is sent retrieves the content at the time the program processes the email for sending. Use this feature to get the latest content at the path at the time the email is sent. You can include personalization in the URL if you choose this option. You cannot edit the content, but you can preview the content for a test subscriber.

8.  If you select Retrieve content when email is sent, you must choose a Retrieval Option:

• Subscriber level evaluates the content to include for each subscriber. If the content is cached, the system uses the cached content; otherwise the system accesses the URL. Use this option if the path in the URL field contains a personalization string or if it triggers a function that changes the content for different subscribers
• Email level accesses the URL once at the beginning of the email send and includes the content for each email. Use this option to save processing time if the path in the URL field will return the same content for every email sent.
• After (post-send) level accesses the URL after the email has been sent. This option does not include content in your email. Use this option if the accessing the URL raises an event to perform a one-time programmatic action, such as logging the
  completion of the send. 

9. If you select Subscriber Level or Email Level, you must indicate what to do if the call returns no content:

• Continue allows the system to proceed as normal.
• Stop the email send prevents the system from processing any more emails in the send and puts the send in an error status.
• Skip the subscriber and continue email send is available only if you select
  Subscriber Level Retrieval. This will skip the subscriber and proceed to process the
  rest of the send as normal.

10. Click OK.

If you selected the option to Retrieve content immediately, the email preview displays the content from the URL you specified. You can edit this content within the email.

If you selected the option to Retrieve content when email is sent, the email preview displays the command that will get the content from the URL you specified. For example, if you specified the URL http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/getmailad.pl, you would see the following content area in your email preview:

NOTE: If you syndicate content from a microsite or landing page that contains AMPscript, that AMPscript does not execute and does not appear properly within the email.

Best Practices with Content Syndication

For best results, internationalized web pages being retrieved using the HTTPGet functionality should be encoded in the same character set as the content type of the internationalized email.

For all other scenarios, testing, testing, and more testing 

Content Syndication in the ExactTarget API

The ExactTarget API is a multi-tier architecture that delineates user interface, business logic, and data access. You can use the API to call business logic objects from processes other than the online application. This allows the same program code to be run regardless of whether it is executed by a user navigating the site or a client application triggering a remote process.

The notification requests described in this help topic can help you keep your systems up-to-date in such common situations as wanting notification when a specific subscriber receives an email from a particular campaign and wanting notification when a campaign has been delivered.

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After;HTTPGet command

Error Handling

The best defense against content syndication errors is a good offense. Using AMPscript, you can prevalidate values being used for content syndication. If your page requires a query string value and will error if it doesn't receive it, you can check the value prior to the call occurring.