Creating an email template with the Marketing tool

You can use the email template editor in the Marketing tool to insert placeholders for e-Marketing Spots, links, promotion codes, and customer names. You can also use the template editor to format text.

You must create an email template before you can:

Create and send an email activity.
Create a dialog activity that uses the Send Message action to send an email.

WebSphere Commerce Professional WebSphere Commerce Enterprise Dialog activities are available only in the Professional and Enterprise editions of WebSphere Commerce.

About this task

As an alternative to this task, a store developer can create a custom email template JSP file and then register the template in the database so that you can use the custom template for email and dialog activities. See Sample JSP code: e-mail template.

Procedure

Open the Marketing tool.
From the toolbar, click the arrow on the right side of Create New; then select E-Mail Template.
The New email Template page displays.

Enter the email template properties as follows:

Property	Description
Name	Enter a meaningful name. This name displays in the email Templates - List page, and identifies the email template.
Description	Describe what this email template is used for.
Record number of emails opened	To collect statistics on the number of target customers who open the email, select this option. Note: If you opt to collect this information, when customers open the email, it sends a request to your server. If you send a large number of emails, this volume of emails can affect site performance.
Record all emails opened and links clicked with an external analytics provider	If your store is integrated with an external analytics provider, such as IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as Coremetrics Analytics, select this option to send this statistical data to IBM Digital Analytics.
Email subject	Enter the subject of the email. This subject displays to customers as the subject in their email client software.
Email content	Enter the email content. This field is similar to a simple text editor. You can enter text directly and format it using the buttons that are found at the top of the field. You can also add placeholders for other types of content, such as customer names, e-Marketing Spots, links, and promotion codes. To add placeholders, from the Insert content list, select a placeholder, complete any fields under the placeholder, and then click Insert. Placeholders are: First name Inserts a placeholder that is replaced with the email recipient's first name when the email is generated. Last name Inserts a placeholder that is replaced with the email recipient's last name when the email is generated. Link Inserts a link that becomes active when the email is sent to customers. Selecting this option displays the Click action for link list. Predefined click action Select one of the following click actions for the link: Display catalog entry This link redirects the customer's browser to the product details page for a specific catalog entry. Selecting this option displays a Catalog entry table in which you must find and add the catalog entry, and then click Insert. Display category This link redirects the customer's browser to the category page for a specific category. Selecting this option displays a Category field in which you must specify the target category, and then click Insert. Issue coupon This link adds a coupon to the customer's coupon wallet. Selecting this option displays the following fields: Coupon promotion: Specify an existing promotion that has a redemption method that is set to a Coupon promotion. URL: Specify the URL that the browser redirects to when a customer clicks the link. Enter the complete URL, for example, http://www.example.com. Text: Specify the text for the link, for example, Get a coupon for 20% off. Add to shopping cart This link adds a catalog entry to the customer's shopping cart. Selecting this option displays a SKU field in which you must specify the SKU of the catalog entry that you want to add to the customer's shopping cart, and then click Insert. Add to wish list This link adds a catalog entry to the customer's wish list. Selecting this option displays a SKU field in which you must specify the SKU of the catalog entry that you want to add to the customer's wish list, and then click Insert. Unsubscribe This link updates the customer's status for receiving email. If they click this link, they stop receiving marketing emails. Custom URL as click action If you select this option, you must enter the URL that the browser redirects to when a customer clicks the text that is specified in the Text field. Enter the complete URL, for example, http://www.example.com. If this URL directs a customer to a site outside of your store, WebSphere Commerce must be configured to allow redirects to the site before the redirect works properly. All of the click options except unsubscribe display a Record the number of clicks check box. You can select this check box to record the number of times customers click the link. This information can be used in reports to determine a link's effectiveness. Note: By default, the generated link always directs customers to the master catalog for your store. You cannot generate a link to direct customers to a different catalog. ¹ By default, the generated link now directs customers to the default catalog for your store when your store has a configured default catalog. If your store does not use a default catalog, the generated link directs customers to the master catalog. If you do not want the generated link to direct customers to the default catalog or the master catalog when no default catalog exists, you can override the catalog ID in the link to direct customers to a different catalog. To override the catalog ID in the generated link, include the `overrideCatalogID="catalogID"` tag within the link template in the E-mail content field. As an example, the following link directs customers to the default catalog for your store, or if no default catalog is configured, to the master catalog. `<e-mail:Link type="product" sku="GDA035_3501" name="Unsalted%20Butter" emailaction="0" linkname="" useHTTP="false" />` The following link includes the `overrideCatalogID` tag to override the default catalog ID and direct customers to the catalog that has the ID "10001". `<e-mail:Link type="product" sku="GDA035_3501" name="Unsalted%20Butter" emailaction="0" linkname="" overrideCatalogId="10001" useHTTP="false" />` Content Spot Inserts a placeholder that is replaced with the content that matches the criteria that are specified for a content spot that is created in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator. Enter the name of the content spot between the quotation marks in `name=""`, for example, `name="HomePageContentSpot1"`. To check the name of a content spot, open the explorer view, select Content Spots from the search filter, and search for the content spot. e-Marketing Spot This option inserts a placeholder that is replaced with the content displayed in an e-Marketing Spot. Enter the name of the e-Marketing Spot between the quotation marks in `name=""`, for example, `name="HomeRow1_Content"`. To check the name of an e-Marketing Spot, click the E-Marketing Spots folder, and then look up the name in the Name column of the E-Marketing Spots - List page. Promotion Code This option issues a unique promotion code to each email recipient. Selecting this option displays a Promotion field in which you must specify the promotion that uses Requires promotion code as its redemption method. The type of promotion code must be either: Simple or advanced system-generated unique promotion codes, or Imported promotion codes You can also specify HTML code in the Email content field. Before you paste HTML code into the field, you must click the following icon in the text toolbar: If you are using the default WebSphere Commerce rich text editor, click . If you activated CKEditor, click . For more information about rich text editors, see Rich text editors.

Click Save.

What to do next

To send an email message that is based on this template to your customers, you can do one of the following things:

¹ You must apply the interim fix for APAR JR54637 to enable support for generating email content links that direct customers to the store default catalog and for overriding the catalog ID in a link.