This article gives you an introduction to the VCE multi-language email campaign creation feature.
Watch the following webinar recording to refresh your knowledge of the feature:
What is a multi-language email campaign?
With the multi-language feature in the Visual Content Editor (VCE) you can create email campaigns in various languages and send them to your recipients all over the world. This feature enables you to manage all the language versions of your emails in one campaign, resulting in simplified automated programs. Multi-language email feature is available in the VCE only.
Why is it good for you?
The multi-language feature helps you enhance your marketing campaign performance. From now on you can reach all your contacts in their own languages.
You can add languages to the email campaigns and templates, so your contacts will receive their appropriate language version based on their language preference.
Multi-language email campaigns enable you to communicate with your contacts in their preferred contact language so they can read and understand any part of the email message. You can define the language versions according to the IETF language standard to localize your email campaigns.
Before you start creating multi-language email campaigns
There are a few prerequisites that you should fulfill before creating language versions in the email campaign:
- Master language defined with the IETF language standard
- Existing, or new Block-based email campaign
Define your language preferences
You need to determine the language versions of your contacts under the menu: Contacts > Add Contact. The multi-language feature uses an IETF language standard to localize the email campaigns.
You can add your language preference, as follows:
- Edit your new or your existing contact list. For details, see Managing contact lists.
- Click Edit.
- Select the Other tab.
- In the IETF language tag field add your languages with language codes in either of the following ways:
- Add a two-letter language code only. E.g.: “en” for English, “de” for German, etc.
- Add a two-letter language code followed by a two-letter country or region code. E.g.: “en-US” for English (United States), “en-GB” for English (Great Britain)
The language code assigned to an email language version needs to be the exact same as the code in the contact's IETF field.
IETF language codes are always case-sensitive. Languages must be written lowercase, while the territory codes need to be uppercase, e.g.: "en" OR "en-US" are both ok.
Migrate your language data
Sync your language data. For information, see Setting up an auto-import.
Should you have any data migration-related questions, feel free to contact Emarsys support for further help.
How does it work?
To add new languages to your existing email campaign or create a new one with the multi-language feature, open the Visual Content Editor (VCE) and go to the Content Creation page.
Languages tab: Creating language versions
Note that, this is one campaign now, however each language version can have its own design, layout and content. For previewing and testing the different language versions you can select any one of the contacts in your database and see exactly how your email will look. For more information, see Contact preview.
Changing the master language
The master language represents the fallback language of your campaign. For example, a contact in your database has "fr
" as her main language and you send your email campaign in "de
", "en-US
", and "es
", then none of these languages match your contact's language preference. In this case the tool automatically reverts to the master language.
1. On the Languages tab click Change Master Language
2. Select the new master language from the drop-down list.
3. Click OK then save your campaign.
Localizing a template with e-language tags
If you have a content that you do not want to update all the time on a campaign level you can insert this code in the template. This way you can avoid translating it every time you use this template.
In the template, wrap the language-specific content (typically the header and the footer) and add the locale
and e-editable
tags to it:
<e-language locales ="en-US">
<span e-editable="editable_name_en">WOMEN</span>
</e-language>
<e-language locales ="de, de-DE, de-AT, de-CH">
<span e-editable="editable_name_de">DAMEN</span>
</e-language>
For more information, see Working with email templates.
Please note that:
- The
e-language
tagged localized content from the template only becomes available in the email campaign after creating the matching Language Version in the Languages tab in the Content Creation step. - The
e-editable
tag must be unique for each language version. For more information, see Editable content - the e-editable attribute.
IETF language tags are always case-sensitive.
Using the Translator role
Let's say you are hiring translators to create multiple-language content for your email campaign. In this case, it could be useful, if you assign limited permission level exclusively for translators. For details, see Setting up the translator role.
A/B testing a multi-language email campaign
You can create two or more different versions of your VCE email campaign and add the multi-language feature to them. Sending out various language versions of your emails in one campaign is an efficient way to enhance your marketing campaign performance.
To optimize your marketing efforts you can perform an A/B test on your multi-language email campaign.
Language-based product personalizations
Rule-based recommendation campaigns using localized fields feature is currently on Pilot release for a limited number of clients only. If you are interested in participating in the Pilot phase, please speak to your Client Success Manager.
Localized product catalogues are supported, so multi-language tokens will display products matching the language preference. Multi-language emails can have repeatable product blocks for product personalization including all product catalog fields using multi-language tokens. If you insert a repeatable block in a multi-language campaign you can select multi-language tokens, that will automatically indent the appropriate language field.
This feature enables you to set up conditions for different languages. Learn more, Personalization rules.
If you use your own email campaign template, ensure it includes any repeatable product blocks. For updating it, follow the instructions described in Creating a Repeatable Block.
Requirements for using multi-language tokens in language-based product personalizations:
- Existing, up-to-date Product catalog
- Implemented Web Extend
Limitations
Note the following limitations and known issues:
Unsubscribe and online version links
- On the Email Basics tab the built-in unsubscribe and online version links do not adapt to various languages, they will use the selected language only.
For a workaround to solve this, use the#HTML_BROWSE_HREF#
placeholder for online version links in the campaign.
Localized unsubscribe form
- Multi-langauge email campaigns refer to a single-language Emarsys unsubscribe form. To show email recipients localised unsubscribe forms, you have these options:
- Build a custom unsubscribe form external to Emarsys for each language version, or
- Create separate email campaigns for each language, which will allow for localized unsubscribe forms.
Custom add-ons
- Custom Product Search add-on has features to manage localizations, but it is not connected to the multi-language management features of the editor, and to the standard multi-language templates.
Reporting
Content-based reporting tool is currently on Pilot release for a limited number of clients only. If you are interested in participating in the Pilot phase, please speak to your Client Success Manager.
- Language-specific performance of the email campaign can be exported to Open Data with the content-based reporting tool.
- You can track how content in different languages performs after personalisation.
- Also, please bear in mind that Visual link tracking shows an aggregate report on built-in unsubscribe link and online version link clicks irrespectively of the languages. All other links are displayed based on the master language’s clicks only.