Content Boxes

Why Use a Content Box

Use a content box when you want to add content (images, text, links, and tables) to your email.

Scenario

Northern Trail Outfitters is ready to send out an email advertising a new sale, but they're faced with a blank email.

To add content, they click in a content box. The highlighted content box displays the create and retrieve buttons.  

Northern Trail Outfitters wants to create new content, so they click create to display the Content-Building Wizard. Because they want to place their logo in the upper left content box, they select Image Only on the Select Orientation page. They follow the prompts through the rest of the Content-Building Wizard. At the end of the wizard they click Save, and the image appears in the content box.

They repeat this process, choosing the appropriate orientations (Text Only, Image Right, etc.) until their email is complete.

How To Insert Text Into a Content Box

To insert text into your content box, follow these steps:

1. When you're in the email editor workspace, hover your mouse over an empty content box into which you wish to place text.

The create and retrieve buttons appear.

2. Click create.

The Content-Building Wizard appears.

3. The first page of the content-building wizard is the Select Orientation page. Select Text Only.

Note: You can insert text and images into the same content box by choosing Image Top, Image Bottom, Image Left, and Image Right.

To continue from this point, see the Content-Building Wizard topic.

How To Insert Images Into a Content Box

To insert images into your content box, follow these steps:

1. When you're in the email editor workspace, hover your mouse over an empty content box into which you wish to place an image.

The create and retrieve buttons appear.

2. Click create.

The Content-Building Wizard appears.

3. The first page of the content-building wizard is the Select Orientation page. Select Image Only.

To continue from this point, see the Content-Building Wizard topic.

How To Insert a Table

A table is made up of rows and columns that enable you to display text and images in side-by-side formats.

Note: If you selected one of the Smart Orientations, you cannot insert a table in your content area. If you would like to insert a table, change the orientation of your content area to Free Form.

Follow these steps to insert a table:

1. In the workspace, place your cursor where you want to insert the table.
2. In the content toolbox at the top of the Edit Content window, click the Insert Table button. A flyout screen appears.
3. Select the number of rows and columns you want in the table initially by highlighting the appropriate number of cells. Click your mouse when you have highlighted the desired number of cells.

A blank table appears in the content area.

Note:  You can insert any combination of text and images in a cell.

Note: To move from one cell to another, use the arrow keys on your computer.   

You can change properties for an entire table or make changes for individual cells, rows, and columns.

• Cells are formed by the intersection of rows and columns, and each cell contains its own set of data. You can change a cell's vertical spacing (aligning text within the cell), change the cell spacing, and add borders and shading.
• Rows appear horizontally across the topic page. You can insert/remove rows and change a row's height.
• Columns appear vertically down the topic page. You can insert/remove columns and change a column's width.

How To Resize a Table Using Table Handles

To resize a table using the table handles, follow these steps.

1. Make the table active by holding down the CTRL key on your keyboard and clicking anywhere in the table. Table handles appear around the handle.
2. With your mouse, click and hold the handle in the lower right corner and drag the table to the desired size.
3. Release the mouse once you have reached the desired size.

How To Insert a Bookmark

If you want to provide the subscriber with a means of jumping to a specific location in the email (for example, in a table of contents for a newsletter), insert a bookmark at each location to which you want to hyperlink. Follow these steps:

1. Highlight the text where you want the bookmark to be created in the workspace. (You may want to create the bookmark in the middle of a word, to help prevent it from being accidentally deleted during future editing.)
2. In the content toolbox at the top of the Edit Content window, click the  button. The Bookmark Information Edit Content window appears.
3. Type the name of the bookmark in the Bookmark Name field.
4. Click OK, and the bookmark is created.  The text appears underlined and blue.
5. Now create the hyperlink that jumps to the bookmark by following the steps for inserting hyperlinks.

To remove a bookmark, right click on the bookmark and click Remove Bookmark.

How To Store a Content Box for Future Use

To save a content box for use in other emails, follow these steps:

Note: If you're using a Lock and Publish account, you cannot add content to the Global Contents folder unless you'er an Enterprise administrator.

1. Hover your mouse over the content box you wish to save, and click store.

The Store Content dialog box appears.

2. Name the content box, and click Browse to choose a save location.
3. Click Save.

How To Retrieve Stored Content

If you have stored content (a static content box, dynamic content box, or survey), you can pull that content into an empty content box by following these steps:

1. In a blank content box, click the Retrieve button.
2. The Retrieve Content dialog box that appears shows all your stored content. You can choose from either regular content (which includes dynamic content as well as static content) or surveys by clicking the appropriate tab at the top of the dialog box.
   

   Note: If you're using a Lock and Publish account and you wish to see the content boxes created and stored by your Enterprise administrator, click Select Folder and then click the Display Global Folders link in the folder selection dialog box.

3. Choose the folder in which the desired content resides by clicking the Select Folder button in the dialog box.
4. Click the radio button beside the desired stored content. A preview of the selected content is shown at the bottom of the dialog box.
5. When you've selected the desired content, click the Select button at the bottom of the dialog box. The content box in your email is now populated with the selected stored content.

You can modify the retrieved content as desired by clicking the Modify button in the content box.

Note: Changes you make to the retrieved content in this email don't affect the stored content; the next time you retrieve the content, you'll still see the content as it was originally stored.

Only certain limited modification is supported for surveys embedded in an email. See Surveys for a description of how surveys work.

How To Insert and Remove Hyperlinks

You can insert hyperlinks to web sites, email addresses, and bookmarks that you've created in the workspace. Follow these steps:

1. Highlight the text that you want to be formatted as a hyperlink.
2. Click  to open the Insert Link window.
3. From the Link To field, choose the type of hyperlink; then complete the fields accordingly.
   
   • Website: Enter the URL of the web site, without the preceding http:// (which inserts automatically).
   • Secure Website: If the web site address begins with https://, select this type and enter the URL (again, without the preceding https://).
   • Email Address: Enter the full email address (the HTML code mailto: inserts automatically) and subject line of the email.
   • Bookmark: Select the name of the bookmark you previously created in this email.
   • Forward to a Friend: The system populates the code when you choose this value. You can still edit the tooltip and link alias.
   • Other: Enter a value that does not match the other types, such as a personalization string. For example, if you have an attribute that contains a URL, you can insert the personalization string to use the personalized URL for each subscriber.

4. If your web site has been set up to take advantage of the conversion tracking feature,  you can choose to track the conversion rate for links to your web pages. To turn on this tracking, select the Conversion Tracking Link check box.
5. Enter descriptive text in the Link Tooltip field.  This text appears when a subscriber hovers their mouse over the text or image for which the tooltip is defined.
6. Enter a descriptive name in the Tracking Alias field.  When you view the tracking results, the tracking alias appears in the results. If no link name is specified, then what you entered in the Address field appears in the tracking results.

The selected text in your workspace is now highlighted as a hyperlink and is coded to jump to the address you defined.

To remove a hyperlink, click anywhere within the hyperlinked text in the workspace and click the  button in the content toolbox.

How To Insert and Remove Document Links

You can insert links to stored documents.

Note: As a best practice, always use document links rather than attach a document directly to an email. Attachments quickly clog a recipient's inbox and are usually considered by recipients to be a virus threat. Document links offer the added benefit of allowing you to track how many subscribers open the document.

The document to which you want to link must already be stored in your account. Follow these steps to create the link:

1. In the workspace, highlight the text that you want to be formatted as a hyperlink.
2. In the content toolbox at the top of the Edit Content window, click  to open the Insert Document window.
3. The Edit Content window displays the documents contained in the document folder specified in the Folder field. If the image you want is located in a different image folder, click Select Folder and select the appropriate folder.
   

   Note: If you're using a Lock and Publish account, and you want to see the documents stored by your Enterprise administrator, click Select Folder and then click the Display Global Folders link in the folder selection Edit Content window.

4. Click the radio button beside the desired document.
5. Click the Select button.

The selected text in your workspace is now highlighted as a hyperlink and is coded to jump to the document you selected. (You can see the code in Viewing HTML Code mode.)

To remove a document link, click anywhere within the hyperlinked text in the workspace and click the  button in the content toolbox.

How To Use the Quick Preview

Use the following steps to use the quick preview for an email:

1. Open an email in the email workspace.
2. Open the content area to preview.
3. Click Quick Preview from the toolbar.