Design FAQs

Can I use multiple sessions to edit one message?

No, only one user should access a message at a given moment and you should not use multiple browser pages.

How can I add a link for contacts to edit their profile?

Using syntax similar to the personlisation tags of e-shot, create a hyperlink and edit the HREF (destination of the hyperlink) to *EditProfileURL*. This personlisation tag will replace with the URL for contacts to edit their profile that's unique for each recipient.

How can I add a link for contacts to forward my email to a friend?

Using syntax similar to the personlisation tags of e-shot, create a hyperlink and edit the HREF (destination of the hyperlink) to *ForwardtoFriendURL*. This personlisation tag will replace with the URL to forward your email to a friend or colleague that's unique for each recipient.

How can I add a link for contacts to unsubscribe from my email?

Using syntax similar to the personlisation tags of e-shot, create a hyperlink and edit the HREF (destination of the hyperlink) to *UnsubscribeURL*. This personlisation tag will replace with the URL to unsubscribe that's unique for each recipient.

How can I add a link for contacts to view my email as an online version?

Using syntax similar to the personlisation tags of e-shot, create a hyperlink and edit the HREF (destination of the hyperlink) to *MyEshotURL*. This personlisation tag will replace with the URL to view your email online that's unique for each recipient.

How can I embed a video into an email?

The compatibility of video in HTML email is still shakey in many email clients, and despite the advancements in third party tools to achieve GIF fallbacks, we do advise hyperlinking to a hosted (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) version of your media.

How do I attach files to my campaign?

To ensure the best deliverability possible, e-shot™ does not support the sending of attachments on campaigns. If you wish to send a file to your recipients, you should first upload it to any online file sharing site, such as Dropbox or your own web server, and then hyperlink to its location. Ultimately, clicks on this monitored link will also aid in showing how many and which of your recipients have attempted to download the file.

How do I copy and paste from a website into HTML Editor, and retain the original formatting?

All e-shot™ HTML Editor messages are configured to always paste as plain text to avoid any non-email compliant code from being inadvertently added to messages. To disable this feature, on the right-hand side of the HTML Editor you will find a "Disable Paste as Plain Text" option.

How do I personalise messages with contact data?

e-shot™'s personalisation tags all follow the same syntax. This is merely the field name surrounded by asterisks. For example, *email* will replace with the contact's email address when the campaign is sent. Likewise, *Telephone* will replace with whatever value is in the telephone field for the contact.

How do I specify a fall back value in my personalisation tag?

When including a personalisation tag such as *firstname* in your message, if the data field you're using has no value, e-shot will update the message with blank.

However, if you'd like to specify a fallback value, you can use the following tag instead;
*firstname=fallback('VALUE')*.NB: Please ensure that the single quotes are ASCII encoded characters. To be sure, copy the tag into Notepad first.  

How do I send a message?

In order to send to your contacts, you must first create a campaign using the message. To do this, you can either select the message in the Message Studio and choose "Create campaign", or you can create a new campaign from scratch on the Campaigns page.

What are the prerequisites for a Dynamic HTML Message?

Dynamic HTML Upload messages require a URL that is coded with email compliant code, and all the images have to be hosted locally. Furthermore, so that the same version of the email isn't sent each time, it is most common that this URL is populated automatically by a system such as a CMS instead of manually.

Why can't I see images in Gmail?

If your images are not showing in Gmail, this is usually caused by a space in your image filename; for example 'my image.jpg'. Rename the image and then re-upload it, avoiding any special characters or spaces in the name.

Why does my company address / unsubscribe message appear at the bottom of my message when I haven't included them? Can I change their style or remove them entirely?

Under EU marketing regulations, a valid business address and unsubscribe option must be included in your messages. As a fail safe, e-shot™ will always append these to the bottom of your message, if the relevant system message tags cannot be found. By simply adding *unsubscribe* and *companyinfo* to your message, these tags will be replaced with the company address and unsubscribe message on your account, and can then be styled like any other text.

Why does my plain text alternative still show an old version when editing an existing message?

To avoid accidentally overwriting any content, e-shot™ will always display the existing plain text version for the message. if you are editing an existing message and have progressed through the message creation flow, simply click 'Reload Text from HTML' in the Actions column to update any text changes made to the HTML version.

Why is ALT text important?

Alt text (alternative text) is a word or phrase to tell viewers the nature or contents of an image when they have not yet downloaded the image or have failed to load it.

Why isn't my message 'ready to send'?

Hovering over the ready to send icon on the Message Studio will specify the reasons as to why your message is not ready to send. Most commonly, this is due to links being invalid, missing images, or steps that have not been completed.