Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification – Part 2 (Content Creation)

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This post is a part of the Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification Tutorial Series 

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Understand and Create Content Blocks

In the world of digital marketing, content is typically characterized as either static or individualized.

• Static content does not change for any reason, for example, the company logo at the top of an email or social links at the bottom.
• Individualized content changes based on data found in the data extension or list at the time of a send or push, for example, a person’s name within a text or specific content related to their interests.

You can individualize content with:

• Personalization strings: Insert subscriber attributes, such as subscriber name, into the subject line, preheader, or content of your email. These can be People or System attributes. Note they are case-insensitive, and should always have a default value set.
• Dynamic content: Display content according to rules that you define based on the subscriber’s attributes or data extension field values. Select Subscriber/Send Preview to see how Dynamic Content and AMPscript renders in an email.
• AMPscript: Use this scripting language to embed subscriber-specific content within HTML emails, text emails, landing pages, SMS messages, and push notifications from MobilePush.

Dynamic Header/Pre–Header: You can set a rule to change the header/pre-header based on subscriber attributes. E.g. if an individual has a birthday coming up, a rule can be set to say ‘Happy Birthday!’ in the header/pre-header

You can create a wide range of content blocks with Marketing Cloud, including Text, Image, Text + Image, Free Form, HTML Content, Dynamic Content, A/B Testing, Button, Social Share, Add a Social Follow Block, Layouts, External Content, Reference, and Image Carousel. Link Title is the text that describes the link to the subscriber.

Create an Email

Content Builder Emails:

• Template Based: Choose this option if you already have a template that you’re using for this email.
• HTML Paste: Choose this option to type or paste HTML code for an email into the editor.
• Text Only: Choose this option if you want to create an email that displays as text only in your subscribers’ inbox regardless of their display preferences. Opens data is never reported for text-only emails.

Classic Content Emails:

• Template Based: Choose this option if you already have a template that you’re using for this email.
• HTML Paste: Choose this option to type or paste HTML code for an email into the editor.
• Text Only: Choose this option if you want to create an email that displays as text only in your subscribers’ inbox regardless of their display preferences. Opens data is never reported for text-only emails.
• Unprocessed HTML Paste: Choose this option if you want to create an HTML-based email that you do not want to be affected by the application. No validation, personalization strings, or other manipulations are done to the email’s content.
• Unprocessed Text Only: Choose this option if you want to create a text-only email that you don’t want to be affected by the application. No validation, personalization strings, or other manipulations are done to the email’s content. 
• Simple Automated Email: Choose this option if you want to create an email you send based on a date attribute. For example, if you want to send your subscribers an email on their birthday, you can create an automated email.

System Default Code Snippets to insert into an email:

• Physical Mailing Address (Required per CAN-SPAM)
• Forward to a Friend
• View Email as Webpage
• Privacy Policy
• Unsubscribe Center
• Profile Center (Required per CAN-SPAM)

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Check the other parts of the tutorial series – Marketing Cloud Email Specialist Certification Tutorial Series 

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Tutorial Series

• Part 1: Email Marketing Best Practices
• Part 2: Email Content Creation
• Part 3: Email Delivery
• Part 4: Email Message Design
• Part 5: Marketing Automation
• Part 6: Data Management
• Part 7: Subscribers Management
• Part 8: Data Segmentation
• Part 9: Tracking & Reporting
• Part 10: FTP Guide