Content Builder Message Creation Tips

Email

• See Email Studio and Content Builder How-To Videos

• To quickly get started creating emails, use email templates. Update content blocks with relevant content for your email and brand. Delete unused content blocks from the email before sending.
• On the Add/Edit Content step of the email creation flow, you can save an email as a template for future use. Use templates as a starting point for a simplified email creation process, especially for content that’s repetitive.
• Use any of these options to create or modify emails with similar content:
  • Create an email from a template.
  • Create from an existing email.
  • Duplicate then rename the email.
• To start from an email created with the classic tools, select Create from existing email, then select the classic email. This action copies the content in your classic email to Content Builder so you can edit, test, and send the email with the new tools.
• Preview and test your emails before sending. We recommend test sending emails to different email clients, browsers, and devices to ensure the email renders correctly.
• To preview emails with targeted 1:1 personalization, set up a test audience and include multiple subscribers and attributes. To preview how the email renders, select a subscriber in Subscriber Preview and toggle between subscribers.
• Quickly send a test email to up to five recipients. Or test send to a larger audience using test data extensions.
• You can test send emails based on multiple content personalization options:
  • Individual subscriber selected in Subscriber Preview
  • Entire subscriber audience in Subscriber Preview
  • Recipient Test Data Extension
• The Subject Prefix field in the Preview & Test step on the Test Send tab can be updated with a test-related word that pre-pends to the Subject in the test send.
• Use the Approvals workflow with Content Builder emails to verify and control emails before live sending. If Approvals is enabled in your account, select Start Approvals in the creation workflow or in the email properties to collaborate with your team in finalizing your email campaigns.
• To quickly locate emails, the Email Subject Line field is displayed in the Content Builder library under the Email Name.
• When Marketing Cloud Engagement sends an email, it inserts hard line breaks in the email to reduce the line length because some mail servers don’t accept emails with lines longer than 700–980 characters. Engagement doesn’t insert breaks in URLs. If the URL is long or you want to specify where lines break, the maximum line length is 700–980 characters.
• To reference Content Builder emails in SQL queries, use the Email ID on the Details screen.
• Asset ID on the Details screen is the primary key for each Content Builder asset. Use Asset ID to reference content blocks with the ContentBlockByID() AMPscript function.

• Edits to emails used in active journeys aren’t used in the journey until you update the activity. See Update an Email in a Running Journey.

Mobile

Mobile activities in a running journey can’t be edited. Create a version of the journey and use the edited email. See Journey Versions.