Newsletter Snippets
About This Feature
Snippets are short lines of text that instruct our system to populate user-defined content into anywhere there is a snippet. This tool is particularly helpful for repetitive information or for newsletters that will be shared among multiple accounts.
How to Use This Feature
From the top menu in your MyNewsletterBuilder account, mouse over "Newsletters" and select "Snippets" in the drop down menu. You will be taken to the Newsletter Snippets page. There you’ll see the “Manage Snippets field, as well as a left side “Actions” menu that includes the option to create a new snippet.
If you have not created any snippets in your account, you will find three default items already installed. The stock snippets are customizable contact information fields, including #contact_data# (snippet that contains your photo and website), #contact_photo# (just your photo), and #contact_photo_HTML# (an HTML link to your contact photo).
Each snippet has already been linked to the information you used to set up your account, and will populate that information if inserted into a newsletter template.
[+] Edit Contact Info
To change the contact website or contact photo associated with your account, simply click on any of the contact snippets (#contact_data#, #contact_photo#, or #contact_photo_html#) in the "Manage Snippets" field. At the top of the page, you will see a single sentence description of the data associated with each of the contact tokens. The fields below will allow you to edit or replace the information that auto-populates each token when the newsletter is live.
Contact Photo. To remove the image associated with the #contact_photo_html# token, “delete photo.” To upload a new photo, click the “browse” button in the “Add New Photo” section on the right, select a new contact image and click add to complete the upload. This will overwrite your current contact photo. You can also change the photo while updating #custom_contact_data# by following the same steps.
Custom Contact Snippet. To edit the contact link in #contact_data# token, delete any data in the Custom Contact Snippet field, and replace it with the desired website URL. It’s important to ensure that all HTML formatting is removed from the link.To do this, first copy any material into a no-format editor like Microsoft’s Notepad or Apple’s Textedit.
Once you have entered the desired URL, click “Save.” After saving, you will see an updated version of your contact link in the Custom Contact HTML Preview field at the bottom of the page.
[+] Add or Edit Snippet
To add snippets, click on “Add” in the left hand “Actions” menu and follow steps 1-4 below.
To edit snippets, click on the name of the desired item in the “Manage Snippets" field and follow steps 1-4 below.
Step 1 – Token. In the first field that appears below the drop down menu, you’ll see the item token in blue lettering (Ex. #my_firstname#). Using snippets is as simple as inserting this text in any newsletter template. It will auto-populate the account holder’s first name in its place.
Step 2 – Description. The second field on the “Edit Snippet” page is a short description of the information that will populate in place of a token (Ex. Your first name). When creating multiple snippets, make sure to add a description that will help you identify each one later. Descriptions are for you, they are not seen by the end users.
Step 3 – Content. The “Content” field displays the exact information that will be inserted where the snippet is placed in the newsletter. Use this field to create the text and images you want to populate in your newsletter, using the toolbar. Remove all formatting prior to inputting information into the Rich Text Editor. To do this, first copy any material into a no-format editor like Microsoft’s Notepad or Apple’s Textedit.
You can insert predefined content, such as the reader’s first name, using the white paper icon on the far left of the toolbar. This will select content from a list of existing information in your account, such as your subscriber information. There you’ll find a lengthy list of links and tools that can be added to any Library Item.
Step 4 – Share Snippet. The final step allows you to set the Item as a shared or not shared item. Shared items will be available to any sub-accounts linked to your enterprise account. Do not worry about this field if you do not have an enterprise account.
[+] RSS Feed Snippets
Created for our
RSS feed newsletters, RSS feed snippets make it possible for MNB to grab various bits of content and data from a website or blog and automatically plug it in to your newsletter.
These are the RSS feed snippets we currently offer:
- Blog Title (#- channel_title -#) - this is the name or title of the blog
- Blog Link (#- channel_link -#) - this is the link/URL for the blog
- Blog Description (#-& channel_description -#) - this is the description (if provided) of the blog; note the use of the "&" which actually allows our system to display the HTML that can be included in the description
- Item Title (#-& item_title -#) - the title of an individual article from the feed
- Item Body (#-& item_content -#) - the body content of an article (html rendered - note the "&")
- Item Description (#-& item_description -#) - the brief description/summary of an article
- Item Date (#- item_date -#) - the date the article was published or last edited
You can access these, along with other snippets, through the pre-defined content icon on your toolbar.
Best Uses
Personalizing a newsletter by addressing the subscriber directly is a great use case. But,
sometimes the information in a snippet can be blank. There is a really cool way to replace blank content with some default text - this works with all our snippets, for example: #first_name|"Friend"#.
This is an example using the snippet for the subscribers first name. IF that first name field is actually blank, the word "Friend" is displayed.
When creating content to be shared with multiple accounts, using snippets allows you to create a consistent look and format for the presentation of essential information, products, brand information and more. Including snippets for Name, Contact Information, and other important information will ensure that each of your sub-accounts presents their personal details in a uniform manner. You can also create product snippets to automatically populate product photos, prices, and links into your newsletters without having to recreate the presentation.