More news for the UI of the customer profile area! – Hub & Marketing Cloud 7.3.0 Release

News continues for the Customer area of the platform.
The next release is scheduled for August, 31st, 2022, from 12:00 pm to 12:30 pm CEST.

What can you do with this release?

Thanks to summary dashboards, you will be able to access data:

  • On overall purchases, ecommerce and retail.
  • On the detail of the ecommerce world.
  • On the web context.

You will be able to see, for example, the total value of revenue and the same data for each individual context, average revenue per customer and per order, number of orders, total page views, etc.

You will have at a glance the opportunity to get a snapshot of the KPIs in one place selecting the desired timeframe, either a split snapshot for each context or an aggregated snapshot.

MC release

Concluding

By dashboarding and navigating data on your customer base and their buying and web behaviours, we can offer additional analysis tools to build on the knowledge of the past and build the future based on data.

Contact us and with the support of our data analysts you can also set up activities to maximise the value of all the information you collect, process it and increase the value of each individual customer profile.

So much work has been done, but keep following us. We are already doing a lot of new developments for the platform, for your digital marketing activities, for you, for your business.

 

 

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New features for the Email Designer editor

Several studies confirm that around 70% of email openings take place from mobile, a behavior that leads us to constantly invest in the quality of emails visualisation from these devices, but also to optimise the way we design emails.

Email Designer thus provides some interesting features precisely to facilitate your intervention when creating email templates.

What can you do with this release?

An improved mobile design mode

To reduce customisation time of email campaigns, ensuring responsive templates, and improving usability from mobile devices, you can now control individual elements of your emails directly in the mobile viewport with just a few clicks and without affecting the desktop design.

By clicking the Mobile icon of a content property while in mobile design mode, you can:

  • Centre or align multi-column content on mobile.
  • Set a different padding value for mobile than for desktop.
  • Change the font size.

The changes made are only applied to the mobile output.

 

 

 

What does this mean?

Until now, the only way to differentiate or separate content between mobile and desktop was to use of Hide on Mobile. It was necessary to duplicate the content and then hide it in the desktop view to make it available only from the mobile device: an investment of resources and energy that was not always optimal. We worked for you and your business.

Borders and rounded corners

Borders

With this release you can set a border at row or column level directly in the sidebar, in the Rows tab, in both desktop and mobile versions.

The border characteristics you can set are:

  • Type: solid, dotted, dashed
  • Thickness
  • Colour

An important tip we would like to give you is not to exceed a border width of 8 pixels in case rendering on MS Outlook is a relevant aspect for your campaigns as this email client does not support larger sizes.

What does this mean?

Since borders help to organise and relate the elements of a template, this feature allows you to distribute content in a more usable and readable manner by row or column instead of by block.

Rounded corners

 

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To create a modern and elegant design in just a few minutes, you can apply rounded corners in the content area at row level, both in the desktop and mobile version.

You can change the characteristics of the corners in the sidebar, on the Rows tab, by adjusting the radius of all four corners or check individual corners by clicking on More Options.

Tip: Since most MS Outlook email clients do not support rounded corners, consider this limitation when using the feature.

What does this mean?

Studies show that rounded corners offer certain advantages for the design and thus the reading of an email including:

  • They appear less bright and present a less fatiguing image for the eyes to view.
  • Human eyes see rounded corners as safer.
  • Our eyes process information in bubbles more effectively than in boxes.

 

 

 

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Rendering in real time available for iPhone 13 and iOS15

Great news for the real-time rendering feature. As of today, it is enriched and it becomes possible to view email previews for:

– iPhone 12 Mini iOS 15
– iPhone 13 Mini iOS 15
– Office 365 macOS 12
– Gmail Windows 10

 

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The in-platform integration of the email preview tool makes it possible to access previews without any need for test deliveries or software external to Send. In fact, it is possible to visualise in a few seconds from the interface how the email will be displayed by the various mail clients, desktop or mobile, and by the most popular webmail, for the different operating systems.

If you are running out of free previews available for your company, contact your Contactlab contact or our Customer Service.

 

 

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You choose the behavior of your automations each time you suspend and reactivate deliveries – Flow API v.2.28.0-289 UI v.2.45.0 Release

From May, 25th, 2022 a new version of the Marketing Automation of the Contactlab platform will be available, the functionality that allows you to design your customer journeys and activate marketing communication campaigns with content, channels and timing tailored to each individual contact. The release is scheduled from 3:30 pm to 4:00 pm CEST.

What can you do with this release?

alert messageWith a view to optimising dispatch, ensuring maximum efficiency of your automation and improving the operability of both processes and user activities, you can decide whether to remove or keep users within an automation if the status changes from paused to active, if the set condition is no longer valid and there are contacts in the queue waiting.

What this means exactly. Let us suppose that within a flow an email is scheduled to be sent after a one-week check, for example on the opening of an ecommerce page. If the automation was paused between the customer’s online activity and the communication delivery – so let’s say within the week’s wait, and the automation was only re-activated after a month, it would probably no longer make sense to send to the contacts in the queue.

Every time you find yourself re-activating a flow, you see a message in which the platform asks what to do. The question is not asked if there are no queues, i.e. there are no users waiting because they have fulfilled the set condition.

What it means

With this release you can decide how the journey should behave in the situation of a change of status and in the presence of dispatch queues. Choosing how to handle the restarted flow after a pause means:

  • Ensure that the delivery schedule is maintained despite the pause.
  • Always provide relevant content.
  • Maintain the conditions set on automation.
  • Reducing dispatch queues.
  • Maximise sending power and effectiveness.

 

 

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Browse, analyse and find anomalies in your database. Plan Release UI v.1.44.0 & API 1.36.1-2442

From May, 2th, 2022, a new version of the platform segmentation functionality will be available.
The release is scheduled between 2:15 pm and 2:45 pm CEST.

 

Plan: new tab

What can you do with this release?

Plan: new tab

In the Segments > Audience overview section, a new tab has been added, Fields distribution. Within this area you can view up to 20 of the values assumed by the demographic fields selected and made visible by the platform user for the segment creation phase. The data highlighted are the name in the field as written and the numerosity. If, for example, we consider the Gender field, it will be possible to find Female, Male, M, F, m, f, -null- etc. according to how it has been filled in the compilation phase.

 

 

Plan: new tab

 

For a field to appear, it must be in the Enabled status in the Settings > Segments > Fields Configuration section.

What it means

With this new function, you get maximum visibility of the distribution of values in the database fields and it becomes possible:

  • Immediately view the composition of the database.
  • Perform an initial analysis of the quality of the fields.
  • Identify any anomalies quickly and easily.

 

 

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News around Email Designer: background images for your emails

You can now take advantage of a new feature in the Email Designer, the platform email editor, which further increases your control over content layering and email design.

What can you do with this release?

 

With a few quick clicks, you can insert background images from the settings side menu into your templates, apply effects and make your emails even more unique.

 

image background

 

Images can be retrieved with a link from an external file or uploaded from the File Manager and you can choose how to position and align them. By default, the image is used at its original resolution and does not scale to fit the display. To improve the display, you can:

  • Fit to the entire background: with this option active, the image is resized to fit the background size of the template.
  • Centre: if you choose this option, the image is positioned in the centre.
  • Repeat: when selected, this option repeats the image over the entire background several times in vertical space.

We have also redesigned the Background Image Row property by replacing the Full Width box with Fit to Background, and inserted buttons that allow you to fit the image to the row or blocks of content.

What does this mean?

Being able to rely on the use of images as backgrounds in your email templates gives you some important advantages including:

  • More choice in the arrangement of components, placing content on top of images to highlight certain parts and give them prominence such as CTA buttons or parts of the text.
  • Ensure maximum readability of texts even when mail clients or browsers do not optimise the display of images, thanks to the separation of the text component.

 

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Let’s simplify the captcha, make it invisible and protect your forms.

How to design your forms safely? The Contactlab platform already offer the possibility of using a captcha to control subscriptions, for example to your newsletters, from illegitimate activities. The feature is always active and available when creating a form on the platform.

In order to prevent subscription bombing attacks or mass subscriptions from non-existent addresses that could compromise your brand reputation, it is essential that subscription forms always include a captcha.

What can you do with this release?

From April, 20th, 2022, a new feature will be available that introduces support and mandatory inclusion of Google’s invisible recaptcha in new subscription forms. With this release, you immediately achieve two important goals: you simplify form filling by end users, and you further strengthen security in the use of the Contactlab platform.

Thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning, forms are automatically protected with a captcha and no interaction with the end user is required. Only if the system considers that the form is not being filled in by a person, the test will appear as we have been used to seeing it until now.

With the invisible captcha, your contacts do not have to prove that they are not a robot. They do not have to recognise any combinations of letters and numbers or select images containing traffic lights, hills or cars.

 

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You can be sure that the invisible captcha has been entered because the universal image confirming its presence appears at the bottom right.

What to do if you are a Contactlab user

Are you a Contactlab user? Find out what happens to the active forms. The invisible captcha appears by default on new forms.

  1. Do you use standard forms that already use a captcha?
    The invisible captcha is automatically active on both active and new forms you create.
  2. Do you use standard forms that don’t use a captcha but you want to add one?
    Go to your form and enter the captcha. You will benefit from the invisible captcha immediately.
  3. Have you customised your form and use a captcha?
    Update your form with a new snippet from Send to introduce the invisible captcha.
  4. Have you customized your form, don’t use the captcha and want to add it?
    Ask one of our experts to help you configure the invisible captcha.

Concluding

The importance of not stopping at double opt-in but securing more sophisticated protection systems has been repeatedly stressed. Despite this, many brands still fail to take the necessary precautions. Often the captcha is seen as a disruptive element within the email and can even deter subscribers.

We therefore decided to take action with this release to:

  • Simplify the interaction with your contacts by offering a more immediate experience and allowing you to complete the subscription with the invisible captcha by filling in as few fields as possible.
  • Improve the display of your content by eliminating the space dedicated to the captcha, considered by discerning brands to be unattractive and out of harmony with the rest of the components.
  • Keep your brand reputation high with forms that are always secure and adhere to best practice.

Nowadays email is one of the most important channels of digital communication and we are increasingly faced with list bombing phenomena that have a significant impact on the activities of brands. We have chosen to bring this issue to the forefront by offering a tool for managing campaigns in the best possible way, avoiding criticalities and ensuring that all emails always reach their intended recipients on time.

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News from the email editor: Improve your text experience!

Every trick counts at Carnival, but this year in Contactlab Carnival has brought more features to our email editor. New functions that enrich Email Designer and improve your experience by simplifying the creation of your campaigns and reducing time.

The main areas of focus are:

  • Content formatting. The addition of new blocks in the side menu, the so-called sidebar, to set general content formatting features at block level.
  • Character formatting. New character formatting features every time a text snippet is clicked within the active template. Changes can be made directly from the toolbar that appears when the block is selected, for maximum customisation of the section.

What can you do with this release?

Blocks: Paragraph, List, Spacer

With the introduction of these blocks, we want to optimise formatting and attention to detail by giving the user control over the style of specific types of content. Let’s take a closer look.

ED-blocks

Paragraph block

A block that allows the configuration of any number of paragraphs of different lengths, which share the same content formatting: from font type to font size to text direction. This option offers a better user experience than before by allowing properties to be applied to the entire block.

List block

ED- list block

 

It provides additional flexibility in the creation of your emails, with dedicated support for numbered and bulleted lists. Unique formatting properties for managing list type, spacing and indentation and even a ‘start from’ option for numbered lists.

With these two new blocks you have the opportunity to customise to the extreme the configuration of their features which may have different design requirements from the rest of the text.

List and Paragraph will progressively replace the Text block which, although still available at the moment, does not include all the new formatting options released from this point on.

Spacer block

ED - spacer_blockThis block serves to simplify the addition of a blank space which is often necessary in email templates to harmonise the distribution of elements. Once you have dragged the block from the sidebar into the structure, you can change the height as you wish.

 

Character formatting in the Text Toolbar

Non-breaking space

ED - non_breaking_spaceSo-called non-breaking spaces look like standard spaces but act differently. When the available space on a line of text is running out, they act like a magnet and keep the two words they separate close together, in this case sending them both to a new line. This gives the user more control over the final display of the text.

 

Clear formatting and special characters

In the toolbar of the selected text block, you will now be able to choose from the numerous special characters the one suitable for the content you are building, as well as decide to reset all existing formatting configurations of a paragraph or part of it, restoring the initial conditions.

ED - character formatting

 

What does this mean?

  • All functionalities at your fingertips.
  • Simplify template creation.
  • Save time to reserve to activities of greater value to your business.
  • Better text experience, better user experience in the Marketing Cloud.

 

 

 

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Search your email templates by tag or name – Release Send Email Designer UI v.1.6.0

From March, 8th, 2022, a new version of Email Designer, the email editor of the Contactlab Marketing Cloud platform, will be available. The release is scheduled from 10:00 am to 10:30 am CET.

What can you do with this release?

With the introduction of a convenient template search interface based on name or tag, you can narrow your view to only the templates you are interested in. You can navigate through your documents easily and quickly and get what you are looking for in seconds.

For an optimal management of My Templates, you can create tags and associate them with a template. The tag can be created before or at the same time as the template association operation.

In this way, as well as searching for templates by name, it is also possible to search by tag, even combined with the use of the AND operator.

 

email designer

 

What does this mean?

With the aim to improving the user experience and the time taken to manage your activities, tagging and searching by tag or by name allows you to optimise the organisation of your email templates and their use.

 

 

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More news for the UI of the customer area!

After only a month, here we are again, talking about great news for the Customer area of the platform. From the next release, scheduled for February, 9th 2022, from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm CET, we will be able to say that we have renewed the dashboard and navigability of all this feature.

The best thing you can do to understand our enthusiasm is to enter the Marketing Cloud and see with your own eyes, try out the new features and let us know what you think.

Any anticipations?

Content reorganisation

A clean distribution of content where the priority is the immediate availability of the needed information and the superfluous is renounced. A creation of new spaces for consultation and research, dedicated to specific types of data. You can find the two new areas Customer Summary and Event Summary, where the readability of the data and the simplification of the information search are favoured.

 

Graph navigability

graph1_newUI

Maintaining the focus on user experience, usability and applicable filters have been improved. There is the possibility to aggregate data on a time basis to obtain clear views of data acquisition and modification trends in real-time, and you can choose which of the information available in the graph to display, for example changing the scale.

 

Insights at a glance

Ready-to-use insights are available to find out, for example, if the customer base is reachable and not only for multi-channel marketing, but for cross-channel campaigns or, among many others, database qualification and cleaning activities or unique profile enrichment.

 

graph#3- newUI

 

Trend of changes

Flat data that come to life thanks to dynamic heatmaps. It is possible to discover the trends of the data collected and classified by type of event, to highlight the moments that have recorded the greatest deviations from the average – both upwards and downwards, and to choose what to see in order to intervene with punctual activities.

graph2_newUI

Concluding

We can’t reveal everything, now it’s your turn. Contact us or enter the platform and start surfing. From now on, getting to know your database will be easier than you can imagine. And if you wish, with the support of our data experts, you can set up strategic analysis activities to make the most of all the information you collect and possess, process it and increase the value of each single customer profile.

So much work has been done, but keep following us, we will do much more for the platform, for your digital marketing activities, for you, for your business.

 

 

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