Partner TRAINING

A complete guide to preparing email creatives

Introduction

BRIDGE’s email creative testing process is designed to be efficient and streamlined to improve the overall experience for our clients. Below you will find everything you need to be successful with your email creatives.

Your email tests will be automated to improve turnaround times and ensure a high-quality customer experience. Creative previews will now be sent alongside all of your tests using EOA (Email on Acid), a third-party tool that creates email previews across the most popular email clients and devices.

NEW STANDARD FORMATS

  • Use of standard BRIDGE macros for Personalization
  • BRIDGE macros and codes for Unsubscribe, View in Browser and Pre-Header
  • Naming your email creative in a specific format
  • Creating & saving the test and live seed lists following a specific file format and file type

Your Campaign Checklist

Email creative must be an HTML file or a zip file and must follow these naming conventions in lowercase:
“content_yourtexthere” for HTML files and “creative_content_yourtexthere” for zip files.

Important Note:

Zipped folders must contain only one HTML file and your creative assets. You may see additional files in your zip folder if your artwork was created on a Mac. Remove this folder prior to upload.

Subject Line, From Line

Both the test and live seed list in the correct file format

Unsub Address, View In Browser (if needed), Pre-header (if needed)

Customization

Formatting Your Creative Files

Your creative must be one of the two options below:

  1. Hosted Email Creative: Fully coded HTML or TXT w/ images hosted by you, your client or a 3rd party
  2. Non-Hosted Email Creative: Zip file with HTML and all associated images

Saving a hosted HTML

If your email creative has hosted images (a fully coded and hosted HTML), the creative naming convention should follow: content_xxxx.html

Example: content_JoesPlumbing.html

NOTE: Be sure that html is saved in lowercase letters.

To save this file, simply save your code as an .html or save the pure html code in a notepad document (all other formats will alter the code)

Saving a non-hosted HTML

If your creative requires image hosting, the zip file naming convention must follow: creative_content_xxxx.zip

Example:  creative_content_JoesPlumbing

NOTE: The images can be posted within the zip folder along with the HTML, or within a different folder within the zip folder, but you CANNOT have a zip folder within a zip folder.

To save this file:

  1. Locate the file or folder that you want to compress.
  2. Right-click the file or folder, select (or point to) Send to, and then select Compressed (zipped) folder.
  3. A new zipped file or folder with the same name is created in the same

Creating, Naming and Saving Seed Lists

What is a test list?

A test list is a list of recipients who receive the testing of your email creatives to review content, rendering and link functionality. The tests are then utilized to approve creative design. You can have multiple rounds of test lists to ensure quality assurance.

What is a live seed list?

A live seed list is a list of recipients to include alongside your live deployment schedule. These recipients will receive a live email creative to notify that their deployment has started.

FAQs

Our system is designed to work with the most simple and standard types of macros.  We wanted the user experience to be as easy as possible, and consistent across all of our valued partners.

BRIDGE used a variety of the recommended previews in the links below, as well as what we deem to be the industry’s more commonly requested and used screens and devices.

https://emailclientmarketshare.com/

https://litmus.com/blog/the-2017-email-client-market-share-infographic

If you need to see additional previews of email clients, please indicate which ones are needed and we will do our best to accommodate.

Our team will work closely with your in-house or third-party creative team to fully integrate the BRIDGE macros into your production processes. We will offer a series of trainings and information sessions around CCM and are available at any time for hands-on coaching and to follow up on any questions about this new process.

The HTMLs need to be properly coded with the BRIDGE macros in order for this system to work efficiently.  By sending HTML over to us following these new requirements, we can guarantee that your creative is tested much faster.

Resources

MACROS
Customizing your Email
View

EMAIL CUSTOMIZATION BEST PRACTICES
Unsubscribe, View in Browser, and Pre-Header
View

HTML SAMPLES
View a Sample HTML Template
View

SAMPLE TEST LIST

View

SAMPLE SEED LIST

View

Contact

If you have any additional questions, our support team is ready to assist.

Holly O’Hara / Account Director
holly.ohara@thebridgecorp.com

 

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