End-user guides:: Setting up a Web Channel campaign – Emarsys

This is a general article to provide you information for setting up your Web Channel campaigns.

This feature must be enabled for you by Emarsys Support, and requires steps 1. and 2. of the Web Extend Data Collection Scripts to be implemented.

Further reading

Use cases

As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Setting up Web Channel Campaigns:

Web Channel campaigns overview

All the existing Web Channel campaigns that have been created earlier in your account are listed on the Campaigns tab. To check the existing Web Channel campaigns, go to Channels -> Web Channel -> Campaigns tab.

Campaigns are listed with their Name, Recipient source, Status, Admin (user) who created them, Type, Priority, Start date, End date.

You can reveal an extra column to display the Campaign Id by entering these keyboard shortcuts:
- Mac OS: Ctrl+Option+E then Ctrl+Option+S
- Windows: Ctrl+Alt+E, then Ctrl+Alt+S

The icons on the right of each row let you jump to the Reporting page , as well as let you edit , copy , preview , or delete the Web Channel campaign.

Clicking the delete is a soft delete action. It means that you just marked the record of the Web Channel for deletion or temporarily prevented it from being selected. To actually delete the record, a "hard" delete or "permanent" delete action must be performed. For this, contact Emarsys Support.

A Web Channel campaign can have one of the following statuses:

In design – Some content or settings are still missing.
Ready – Not activated yet, but ready to launch.
Active and awaiting publishing – The campaign is ready and scheduled for later.
Assigned to AC program – The campaign has been added to an Automation Center program, but is not active yet.
Running – Currently running on the website.
Publishing – A temporary state used only while Web Channel is waiting for the server's response.
Completed – The campaign has been finished.

The status of a Web Channel campaign can be returned from Publishing to In design status in that case the campaign cannot be launched due to an error.

For information on the campaigns' priority, see Campaign priority.

You cannot launch campaigns again if their Status is Completed. To do so, first you have to copy the campaign, then you can launch the duplicated one.

Selecting your campaign template

The Web Channel campaign templates come with a preset design that is easy for you to adapt to your brand and content. As you make your choices, the number of available campaign templates will reduce to display only those which are suitable for your needs.

To create a new Web Channel campaign based on templates proceed as follows:

Go to Campaigns > Web Channel > Campaigns tab and click Create Campaign.
Select the template you want to use for your campaign, based on the values you set:
- Search: Type the keywords of your campaign.
- Campaign strategies
- Campaign formats
- Editor types
Hover your cursor over the campaign template you want and click Create Campaign.
Optionally, you can create a blank campaign, if you do not want to use any of the templates.

You can edit an existing campaign listed under the Campaigns tab, if you don't want to create a new one. You cannot edit a campaign, if the Status is Running or Publishing or Active and awaiting publishing.

Campaign strategies

Select the strategy of your campaign according to your objective, as follows:

Contact acquisition – To use a sign-up form in your Web Channel campaign.

You cannot use the Change Profile form type in Web Channel campaigns.

Unintrusive messaging – To create a less intrusive campaign.
Customer reactivation – To win back and reactivate your churning customers.
Browse recovery – To re-engage your visitors and turn them back before they want to leave your site.
Opt-in re-permissioning – To allow your contacts to set the "opt-in" field to true if they forgot to opt in during registration.

Creating a blank campaign

You can create a blank Web Channel campaign, if you do not want to use the preset design and configuration of any templates.

Click the Create Blank Campaign button in the upper-right corner.
Choose your preferred campaign type, according to your needs.

Campaign formats

Web Channel gives you various campaign formats to apply for your campaign. For detailed description, see Which Web Channel campaign format to use?

You can select from the following campaign formats:

Editor types

Edit your Web Channel campaign with any of the following editors, according to your needs or earlier editor selection:

Visual Editor – If you design the campaign yourself either for desktop or for mobile users, you will want to use our Visual Editor, which might be familiar to you from block-based email editor (VCE). If you have selected a Visual Editor-based campaign you can display it for visitors who are checking your site on Mobile, or just for Desktop users.
Variables Editor– As part of the Visual Editor, Variables Editor enables you to customize layout elements. You can define the values (colors, images, size, etc.) of variables for each elements of a template.

Web Channel reporting cannot differentiate between desktop and mobile impressions in Visual Editor-based campaigns. This works only for HTML campaigns.

HTML editor – Under Creative Editor tab, If you want to edit the HTML source, you can freely insert your JavaScrip or HTML code or a static image uploaded from the Media Database. You can also apply an external agency to do that for you.
Creative Selector - In case of Overlay campaigns you can select here to create a form or a "post registration".

You will not be able to change the editor in the campaigns later, so make sure you select the right version at this stage.

Setting up the campaign

Once you have selected your campaign template, the Web Channel setup flow is opening containing these main steps:

Campaign settings
Placement
Content
Trigger & Scheduling

1. Campaign settings

Campaign Settings page enables you to name (or later rename) your Web Channel campaign, choose the website where you would like to display the campaign, set your audience (Recipient source) and define various filter options.

In the Web Channel campaign names only word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) are supported for Web Channel campaigns used in Automation Center programs. Other characters are replaced with an underscore.

General Settings

Campaign name – This will identify the campaign on the Campaigns tab.
Campaign domain – You can select the domain on which you want to run the campaign. You can connect your Web Channel campaign only to one domain. Only domains already associated with your account are listed here.
Template – Select a pre-built template. This option is available only for Visual editor.

A Web Channel campaign can be connected to one domain only. If you want to run a campaign on more domains, you can copy it and select another domain for the new campaign. If there are more domains configured for the account, you need to select the one you want to use for the campaign.

Recipient Source (Audience)

Here you can define the target audience of the campaign. The available options are:

All Visitors - Every visitor will see the campaign on your website.
Unidentified Visitors - Only those visitors that Emarsys cannot identify will see the campaign on your website.
Automation Center - Select this option when you want to use the Web Channel campaign in an Automation Center program. Learn more about how you can use Web Channel in the Automation Center.
Interactions audience - Select this option when you want to use the Web Channel campaign in an Interactions program.
Segment - If you select this option you will be able to select any of the segments already available in your account.

Notes:

Segment results are cached for 10 minutes. So, if you run the same segment again within 10 minutes, you will get the previous (cached) results.
Segments are updated every 6 hours. For example, if a contact was added to the selected segment 2 hours ago, then it might happen that they have to wait 4 more hours until they can see your Web Channel campaign.

The following options are not taken into account when testing or previewing the Web channel campaign:

Personalization values (like vouchers) are displayed only if the campaign is launched and running.
Filters: Currently filters are not supported in preview mode. If you use various Segment criteria or session filters in your campaign, remove them. If you don’t use filters, you may allow the Web Channel campaign some time to render in test mode.
Emarsys Scripting Language (ESL) code

Browsing session filters

Here you can apply additional filters on the selected contacts segments for more precise targeting.
If you click Edit Filters the following filters are available:

Site language – You can select the language of the website where you want to run the campaign. This option allows you to use localized campaigns in multi-language web stores. If you select a language here, the campaign will only appear when the website is showing content in the selected language. For more information, see Determining site language.
Cart value – Use this filter to target those customers only whose shopping cart value meets the criterion you define here.
Purchase value – Use this filter to target those customers only whose purchase value meets the criterion you define here. Filters use the currency that you set as your base currency for your account.
Stop targeting recipients after click – If enabled, the campaign will not be shown to visitors who have already clicked it. Note that closing an overlay does not count as a click. Select it if you wouldn't like to target those customers who already clicked on your Web Channel campaign.
Show only for logged in users – If enabled, only visitors who are logged in to your website will see the campaign.
URL - Here you can specify the characters or URL segment that must be found in the URL of a page on which your campaign will be displayed. By adding multiple session filters with different operators, targeting becomes more accurate. For example, you can configure the URL session filters to display your campaign on all pages, except for the checkout site. For more information, see Using URL filtering to trigger Web Channel versions.

Click Apply when you are completed setting up your browsing session filters.

Filter Summary

You can see a summary of all the set filters within your campaign. Click Edit Filters for further modification.

Determining site language

How does Web Channel determine the chosen site language? The internal logic looks for these four clues in the following order:

OpenGraph locale tags: https://ogp.me
HTML lang attribute: <html lang="fr">
HTML meta tag for content language: meta[http-equiv="language"] content
browser language:

nav.language ||
nav.browserLanguage ||
nav.systemLanguage ||
nav.userLanguage ||

where nav = window.navigator from the browser

So, for Web Channel's Site language filter to work on your site, the selected localized site must use one of the above four methods for setting the language. Without one of these, the localized version of the campaign may not be found.

Using URL filtering to trigger Web Channel versions

If you cannot implement any of the above four language definitions, you can still use URL filtering as a workaround to identify your language sites.

Append the chosen #parameter to use with the link to the end of the URL. www.myshop.com/#dutch
Call the go command in Web Extend.
Use the URL filter in Web Channel.

By HTML campaigns, you cannot select the Device session filter in the drop-down. However, you can simply switch to Mobile preview, and leave the Desktop Preview empty to limit displaying the campaign to mobile users. Alternatively, leave the Mobile preview empty, and add your HTML code to the Desktop Preview to display the campaign to desktop users only.

2. Placement

When setting up Embedded campaigns in some cases your web browser is not available to display the Placement step in the Web Channel set up flow. In this case Placement step is omitted and you can find the content of the Placement step (Zone Selector) in the Trigger & Scheduling step.

As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Placement in Web Channel:

In the Placement step, you can define how and where your Web Channel campaign is displayed on your website, which can be on specific pages or on specific URLs.

Show on these pages

Here you can select to display the campaign on specific pages or on specific URLs. The available options are:

All pages – By default, the campaign will be shown on all the pages of your website, but the session filters set will be taken into account.

You must choose this option if you want to configure the pages on which your campaign will be displayed by using Session filters - URL option (see above).

Category Page only – The campaign will be shown only on the product category pages of your website (e.g. Men’s T-shirts).
Product Details Page only – The campaign will be shown only on the product pages where users can see the details of a single product.
Search Results Page only – The campaign will be shown only on the pages where your website displays product search results.
On the post-purchase page only – The campaign will be shown only after the customer made a purchase.

Zone Selector (Embedded campaigns only)

For Embedded campaigns you can select the zone on your website which will be replaced by your personalized Web Channel message. You can also save the selected area for future use. For detailed information, see Creating an Embedded Web Channel campaign.

Preview

On the right you can see a preview of the selected page in the desktop or mobile view of how the campaign will look on the selected page.

This preview pane works as an internet browser that allows you to browse the pages of your website. At the top, you can see some browser controls as well as an address bar that displays the URL path segment of the page you are viewing so that you can copy it for URL-based campaigns.

It also shows the page category, if available, and whether the page will be included in the campaign.

Important!

The following criteria are not taken into account when previewing or testing a Web channel campaign:

Personalization values (like vouchers) are displayed only if the campaign is launched and running.
Filters: Currently filters are not supported in preview mode. If you use various Segment criteria or session filters in your campaign, remove them. If you don’t use filters, you may allow the Web Channel campaign some time to render in test mode.
ESL: Emarsys Scripting Language (ESL) code is not evaluated during testing.

3. Content

On the Content page you can choose a layout, modify the content and test the campaign.

As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about the Content tab in Web Channel:

You can edit the content of your campaign in various ways:

Visual Editor
- Variables Editor
HTML editor
- Zone Selector/Creative Editor

Visual Editor

Visual Editor allows you to select from a series of pre-built layout templates and edit the content in the live editor window.

On the Layouts tab, you can see the layout templates you can choose from. The number of layouts available is different for each tactic.

Web Channel reporting cannot differentiate between desktop and mobile impressions in Visual Editor-based campaigns. This works only for HTML campaigns.

Variables Editor

Variables editor is part of the Visual editor where you can customize layout elements. The Variables Editor tab lists the layout elements you can customize.

You can define the values (colors, images, size, etc.) of these variables for each elements of a template on the Variables tab. For example, you can change the background color or size from one template to the next.

As you add the value to each variable, you can see the result immediately in the preview pane.

For all variables the Reset button is available to revert the default template settings of the given variable.

Even if you have already done some content editing, feel free to switch to another layout template as all your existing edits will be retained in the new layout as well.

HTML editor

The HTML editor allows you to use custom content (HTML codes) in your campaigns, and requires some familiarity with HTML.

After you paste in your HTML code you will see the content in a preview, with the image and link URLs available to see and edit.

If you leave the mobile version blank in the HTML editor, the campaign will not be shown on mobile devices.

To successfully track clicks on a link in your Web Channel campaign made with the HTML editor, make sure to use the following attribute:

data-wps-href

Example:

<a href="http://www.emarsys.com" data-wps-href="http://www.emarsys.com"><font style="font-family:Gotham, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#FFFFFF">
<u>http://www.emarsys.com</u></font>
</a>

Image – An image will be your Web Channel message. The image will be loaded from the Image URL and will link to the Link URL you specify here.
HTML – The HTML content you enter here will be shown in the campaign.
Form – For contact acquisition campaigns types, this is the only option you see here and it lets you select a predefined form in a drop-down list. If you have not created any forms yet in your account, you can do so by going to Content > Forms and clicking Create Form.

You cannot use the Change Profile form type in Web Channel campaigns.

Personalization

Only web channel campaigns targeting segments or included in Automation Center programs can contain personalization tokens.

Optionally, you can personalize the text content of your campaigns by using variables to populate your message with values from your Emarsys database fields or other external data sources. To personalize your text in this way, proceed as follows:

Note that if customers already found in your contact database visit your website from a new device or browser they will be treated as unidentified visitors until they log in or perform any other action on the basis of which we can identify them.

In the HTML box, place your cursor in the text block where you want to add the variable.
Click .
This will open the personalization window, where you can select the personalization you want to insert.
Click Apply to insert a personalization token into your HTML code.

When the message is displayed on your website, these personalization tokens will be replaced by values from the data fields you selected, for example, by your contact’s first name in the salutation.

Important

At this stage, no preview is provided for personalization tokens.
Personalization may show outdated values for fields in which values change often, such as last session products or last abandoned products, as changes in these fields propagate to Web Channel with a delay. Please take this into consideration when using such fields for personalization.

For more information on using personalization tokens, see Omnichannel personalization - Creating categories and tokens.

4. Trigger & Scheduling

As a quick reminder, here is the onboarding video about Triggering & Scheduling:

Before activation, here you can set when you want to display the Web Channel content, in the following settings:

Scheduling – Defines the duration of the campaign. The default is 7 days period starting on the actual day.
Time zone - By default, scheduling is based on your account's default time zone. To select another time zone for your campaign, click the drop-down.
Display frequency - You can define how many times and how often you want the campaign to appear for a given contact. Frequency filtering is currently implemented on the client side. This means it works per device only provided that the given contact does not delete the local browsing cache. So, if the contact does not delete the local cache, they may still see the 'only-once' campaign on a different device. If the local cache is deleted, the contact will see the same campaign again on the same device.

Let the machine decide (AI) option is where an algorithm calculates when and how often would be the best to show the campaign based on the strategy you choose. When you use the conservative setting, the campaign will be shown less frequent than with a more aggressive setting.

The option Let the machine decide (AI) is being removed. From 2021.08.19. you are not able to use it in newly created campaigns, but it remains available for existing campaigns where it is already used. If you are using this feature, you will be notified before it is fully removed.

Display Trigger feature is available for Overlay campaigns only.

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