If you have multiple accounts, you can easily distribute a copy of your Automation programs to another account. This way, you can use the same resources (i.e. segments and campaigns) without recreating the same program from scratch.
You can distribute programs to accounts in different environments, parent/child account setup is not required.
Prerequisites
Users can only distribute programs if the Distribute Automation Program permission is enabled for the required user role on the Management > User Management > Automation tab. For more information, see User roles and permissions.
This permission is automatically enabled for the Administrator user role.
Use cases
Program distribution may come in handy in the following cases:
- If you have created a program on your staging account and would like to use it on the production account as well.
- If you create programs on a repository account and would like to share them with the brand, business unit or on regional accounts.
- If programs and campaigns have to be approved before you launch them.
Distributing a program to another account
Here is what you need to do to distribute a copy of an Automation program to another account:
1. Navigate to the Automation > Automation Programs page and click the Distribute icon next to the program you would like to distribute.
2. Configure the following settings as required:
- Destination account - The copy of the selected program will be distributed to the chosen account.
Only the target accounts your user is authorized to access are available in the dropdown.
- Target mobile application - The mobile application that will be used on the selected account.
This field is only displayed if your program uses Mobile Engage campaigns or segments.
If there is no active mobile application on the selected account, then the Mobile Engage campaigns or segments will not be distributed.
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Distribute resources - This function is available for both Automation Center and Interactions programs. By default, this option is selected, which means that the selected program is distributed along with its resources to the destination account. To distribute a copy of the program canvas without the resources used in it, deselect this checkbox. This may come in handy in the following cases:
- The source and target accounts have different language settings and use different datasets, so you only need to distribute the program logic.
- When you are using different custom fields on the target account and segments using the custom fields cannot be distributed.
3. When you are ready, click Distribute.
Some assets cannot be distributed, for example, relational segments or API nodes. Such resources will not be available in the distributed program on the target account. To check if there are errors, open the distributed program.
You cannot distribute assets if any ESL statements are used across different VCE blocks within an email. The opening and closing ESL statements must exist within a single VCE content block for this feature to work.
If the program you would like to distribute contains custom fields (e.g. contact segment or VCE block targeting) that have the same ID, but a different type on the target account, then you cannot distribute the program. In this case, the following error message will be displayed along with details of the custom fields causing the issue:
This program can’t be distributed because of the following errors:
To resolve this issue, you need to:
- Modify the field’s type as required on the Management > Field Editor page on the target account.
We recommend that you contact the Account Owner in the following cases:
- If you do not have the required permissions to edit custom fields,
- Before modifying a field’s type because it might lead to issues in other segments.
You will be notified when the program is distributed to the destination account.
4. Check your program and the selected campaigns before activating it.
You may need to activate some of the distributed campaigns before launching the program.
5. When your program is ready, activate it.
Supported assets
Campaign distribution supports the following resources:
- Automation Center entry points and nodes:
- Entry points:
- Channel nodes:
- Action nodes:
- VCE email campaigns
- Web Channel campaigns
- Mobile Engage push campaigns
- SMS campaigns
- Contact segments (if all contact fields, email categories, link categories etc. are already in your campaign)
- Mobile Engage segments
- Web behavior segments
- AI segments
- Digital Ads audiences
- Interactions triggers and nodes:
- Triggers:
- Channel nodes:
- Action nodes:
Distributing templates
After distributing a campaign, it will still be connected with the original template. So, if the template is updated, the updates will be pushed from the master account.
Distributing a template to another account
If you would like to have the template on another account, you can copy it with the Copy template to this account option.
We recommend using this option only for advanced users. For example, it may come in handy, when you would like to create a language-specific template on another account. In this case, you need to distribute the campaign to the other account, copy the template and modify it to make it language-specific. After copying the template, all newly distributed campaigns will automatically be connected to this language-specific template, allowing you to update it based on the language-specific settings.
Here is what you need to do to distribute a template to another account:
1. In the target account, navigate to Channels > Email Campaigns, select a campaign and click the Edit icon next to it.
2. On the Content Creation page, click ... in the top right corner and select Copy template to this account.
Please note that distributing templates is not reversible, all existing and future distributed campaigns which are based on the original template on the source account will be connected to the copied template on the target account.
Result
After distributing a template, all campaigns on the target account will be connected to the copied template.
All newly distributed campaigns will be connected to the template that you copied to the target account.
Known issues and limitations
Account-specific limitations
- Distribution among accounts based on two data types:
- Connected accounts: Accounts that belong to the same billing profile are connected by default. If you need to connect accounts with different billing information (e.g. in the case of different legal entities), please contact Emarsys Support.
In the case of accounts signed on Emarsys paper, the database of related accounts are synced monthly based on the billing cycle. Therefore, Program distribution will be available in Emarsys accounts from the date when the first billing links to the given account.
- Admin relations: Users assigned to the given account can distribute programs to the specific target accounts.
If you don't see any connected accounts or you see only a limited number of accounts in the dropdown, please contact Emarsys Support.
Campaign-specific limitations
- Campaigns are distributed from the source account to the target account (a local copy is created on the target account); however, email campaigns still depend on the VCE template of the source campaign.
- Only VCE email campaigns are supported, you cannot distribute Custom HTML or VCMS campaigns.
There is a workaround to overcome this limitation:
- You need to remove the VCMS and custom HTML campaigns from the program or replace them with VCE campaigns before distributing the program.
- Distribute the program to the target account.
- Create new campaigns and add them to the distributed program on the target account.
Please note that we recommend using VCE campaigns instead of VCMS ones because VCMS is legacy functionality that is no longer actively maintained by Emarsys.
- In the case of Triggered Emails, the sender domain will not be distributed. Therefore, you need to add it manually to the Email address field.
- When distributing Mobile push campaigns, only one language variant is distributed instead of all language variants. Emarsys is already working on a solution.
- Using conditional text in the subject line of VCE campaigns may cause an error during distribution.
There is a workaround to resolve this issue: remove conditional text and personalization tokens from the Subject line and From (name) fields before distributing the program. After distributing the program, add the conditional text and personalization tokens to the Subject line and From (name) fields manually on the target account.
- If you are using the Repeatable Block in your email campaigns, then you need to implement the Repeatable Block manually after distributing the program. Emarsys is already working on a solution.
- Program distribution does not affect the
imgpath of images in VCE campaigns, the image links will be identical in the source and target VCE campaigns. If you host images on a different domain, then it may affect deliverability. If the accounts use different domains, then we recommend checking them individually. - You may need to activate some of the distributed campaigns before launching the program.
- You cannot distribute assets if any ESL statements are used across different VCE blocks within an email. The opening and closing ESL statements must exist within a single VCE content block for this feature to work.
Segment-specific limitations
- Segments are distributed as new segments, even if a segment with similar segment criteria exists on the target account.
There is a workaround to overcome this limitation: replace the duplicate segment on the target account with the existing segment instance and delete the distributed duplicate manually.
- Programs containing more than 50 segments may result in distribution failure. To avoid this issue, we recommend distributing only the program framework without any subresources, and then adding the segments to the program on the target account before the program has been activated.
Custom fields-specific limitations
- If the program you would like to distribute contains custom fields (e.g. contact segment or VCE block targeting) that have the same ID, but a different type on the target account, then you cannot distribute the program. In this case, you will receive an error message listing the fields to be fixed.
- System fields cannot be distributed.
- You can distribute a maximum of 100 custom fields at the same time.
- Currently, the following custom field types and their attributes cannot be distributed:
- Single choice
- Multiple choice
- The following functions are not supported when distributing custom fields:
- Placement of field name in form
- Edit JavaScriptandShow JavaScript
- Currently, field names are only available in English without translation.
Not supported resources
- Please note that not all resource types are supported. For example, the following ones are not supported: relational segments, API nodes and non-VCE email campaigns. Most errors or cases where user action is required are marked within the Automation Center editor. You need to verify programs and their content before activating the distributed program.
- Currently, personalization fields are not supported. Please check the ESL snippets used in your campaigns before activating the program.
Node-specific limitations
- Participation check nodes that are used in other programs cannot be distributed. If you distributed a Participation check node that is used in other programs, please check it because after distributing the program, it will be empty.
- Although you can distribute programs using the Update contact list node, after distributing the program this node will be empty.
Domain-specific limitations
- Sender, sender domain and link domain should have the same root domain.
In case customers are using different image root domains, they should update the image domain in the distributed campaigns and also upload the images to the destination account.
Example:
User distributes a program with email campaigns from Account A to Account B.
Scenario 1:
Root domain: bestrun.com for both accounts.
If Account A is using link.bestrun.com as the link domain, and Account B is using email.bestrun.com, then both the source and the target are using the same domain, which will not cause deliverability problems.
Scenario 2:
Root domain: bestrun.com for Account A, loremipsum.com for Account B.
If Account A is using link.bestrun.com as the link domain, and Account B is using link.loremipsum.com, the images will be hosted on different domains which can impact deliverability.
Images need to be uploaded to loremipsum.com and updated in the campaigns and templates.