Salesforce Email Templates

Salesforce is the leading CRM, ranked at the top for sales, marketing, as well as customer service. With more than 150,000 companies using this powerful platform, it is quite clear that it can help you grow your business faster with cutting-edge technologies and innovative features. Launched in the year 1999 by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris, it has around 36,000 expert professionals who contribute to its huge revenue generation. ($13.3 billion in FY 2019)

It is also ranked #1 among all the email marketing platforms with all its sophisticated tools that allow you to reach your subscribers with personalized communications. It not only allows you to segment your subscribers according to the profile data, but also automates the entire email journey so that you can reach the audience at the right time with the right message. Salesforce is the safest bet if you are looking for a tool that can help you in making your email marketing strategy more efficient.

Are you deploying boring email templates to your subscribers?
Well, Salesforce can let you send impressive emails to your subscribers with their email templates. While it might seem to be a daunting task to create email templates in Salesforce, the truth is exactly the opposite.

Salesforce email templates help to enhance your productivity and send out consistent emails to the subscribers. To give you an overview, these templates with merge fields give you the liberty to deploy emails instantly by adding field data from Salesforce records. You can either build your own template or use templates developed by anyone else in the organization. You can even include a letterhead to the email template to ensure standardized branding and immediate brand recall for the subscriber.

First of all, we will have to understand the difference between the two interfaces: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience, as far as email templates are concerned.

Four easy steps to select an email template

• Go to the record from which you want to send out the email.
• Click the Email tab from the Activity tab.
• For inserting the template, click on the Templates icon and choose the template you like. You will be able to see its contents.In the Lightning Experience interface, you can select a Lightning email template that is global. The template’s related entity type can be contact, lead, account, or opportunity. Choose the email template’s related entity type at the time of template creation from the Email Template page.
• Edit your email and then send after checking the preview.

Using Email Studio in Salesforce

Email Studio is a tool in Salesforce that facilitates sending basic newsletters as well as complex campaigns ranging from promotional to triggered messages.

Let's understand how it works…

1. First of all, you must set up Account Administration in Email Studio Admin.

   Set the Account Settings like Physical Address, Security settings, Headers and Footers, URL Expiration, and Timezone and Date format.

   In case you are looking forward to having multiple From Names in the account, you can use Send Classifications to set it up.

   Set up your Reply Mail Management.

   You will have to set up the Sender Authentication Package, if you have purchased the same.

   For Enterprise Edition users, use Business Units to configure the account structure.

   You can either use the default roles provided in the email studio or create your own.

   Create the users.

2. Next comes Account Organization in Email Studio.

   Define how you will structure the folders and organize objects. It is fundamentally used for Content and Data.

3. Configure the Data Model in Email Studio.

   First of all, you must determine whether you want to use Lists or Data Extensions.

   If you want to use lists, set up Profile/Preference Management attributes.

   If you want to use data extensions, you will have to configure sample Data Extensions with the fields that have to be copied for use in the future.

   Next comes the creation of the folder structure and multiple test lists or Data Extensions.

   Then, you can import the subscribers to test Lists or Data Extensions.

   Lastly, review the Profile Center so that it looks suitable for subscribers.

4. Use Content Builder to set up Content.

   Once you create the folder structure, you can upload images and other content to it.

   To have reusable content, create sample content blocks. Alternatively, you can create and save content blocks while creating the email.

   You can either create sample templates or use the default templates provided by them.

   Create sample emails.

   Test these emails on the diverse email clients, devices, and browsers before you send it out to the live audience so that they render flawlessly and ensure a smooth subscriber experience.

   Besides rendering, you must also test email personalization.

   Salesforce comes with two interestingly incredible features, namely Content Syndication and Content Detective.

   With the help of Content Syndication, you can add content in your emails directly from external sources. You just have to add the path to the content with the URL rather than the content itself. The URL can either be an HTML code, CGI script, or a simple text file. In other words, it can be anything that can be accessed in a web browser.

   How to make it work?

   1. On the text editing screen of Email Studio, go the Insert menu and then choose External Content.
   2. Provide the URL of the external content you want to display in the content area.
   3. You can either choose to retrieve the content IMMEDIATELY or WHEN THE EMAIL IS SEND.
   4. If you go with the latter, choose the retrieval option according to the explanation below.
   5. For those who selected subscriber level retrieval or email level retrieval, go to the next step.
   6. If the call returns no content, let the tool know what you want it to do.
      • - Continue to proceed as normal
      • - Stop the sending of the email (and put the send in ‘error’ status)
      • - Continue sending the email after skipping that subscriber, provided you have selected the subscriber level retrieval.
   7. Click on OK.

   Need better guidance?

   Hire a Salesforce certified expert

   Commands to use for Email Studio Content Syndication in the API

   1. HTTPGet Include this command in the email body to add subscriber-specific content in every email. It will fetch content from the particular URL when the email is sent.
      Syntax: %%httpget "URL"%%
   2. HTTPGetWrap This command should be added in the <a> tags of links in the syndicated content so that you can track links that are placed in the emails.
      Syntax: <a href="httpgetwrap|URL">Click on this link</a>
   3. Before;HTTPGet If you want to retrieve the content from the specific URL once at the beginning of an email send and not separately for every instance.
      Syntax: %%before;httpget "URL"&&
   4. After;HTTPGet Through this command, provide a notification to the CRM or CMS that the email has been sent. Alternatively, you can include it at the end of an email definition to execute an action.
      Syntax: %%after;httpget "URL"%%

   Tips for Effective Content Syndication

   It is quite likely to make errors in content syndication. Here’s how you can avoid them:

   1. Pre-validate the rules by using AMPScript before you execute the content syndication call. This will help you do away with data-related issues.
   2. Use the same character encoding like the one used in the websites from which you want to syndicate the content.

   Content Detective on the other hand helps to flag trigger words like big bucks, !!!, $$$, Earn Cash, Enlarge, Hardcore, Free Gift, Naughty, and Save $ to name a few. It helps to ensure optimum deliverability rate by letting the user know about the words that can trigger spam filters and have a negative impact on the sender reputation.

5. Build Workflow and Approvals Process.

   To make sure that all your emails are reviewed before deployment, you must establish a workflow timeline and determine an approval process with your teams. This will minimize the likelihood of broken emails.

6. Send Your Email in Email Studio.

   Make up your mind whether you want to save the send configurations for use in the future.

   In case your answer is YES, you should use User-initiated Emails on the Interactions tab.

   If not, you can send emails with the help of send option on your Content Builder emails. Choose the Tracking Destination Folder while sending in order to ensure that the campaign results save to the right folder.

7. Track your Email in Email Studio.

   Manage all the tracking results from the Tracking option on the Sends page. It stores all the send results of the email that can help you measure the performance of the email campaigns.

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