We are excited to announce the launch of our brand new, revised Contact Center, which includes the ability to select Saved Searches as a recipient list, as well as use a simple, easy-to-use drag and drop email editor to compose your emails. This new email editor not only makes editing emails a breeze, it also ensures that your emails are optimized to appear easily readable in any email client, and on any device. Click here for full details on using the new version!
With the launch of the new Contact Center, we've had several questions that are addressed below:
Q: Where are my old saved emails?
A: If you need to find or send out old emails until you've had a chance to take advantage of the new contact center's improved features, you can click the "Back to Contact Center" button in the upper right corner of the new Contact Center. You can load and view/copy those saved emails, or even send from the old Contact Center if you need to get something out urgently.
Q: I want to bring my old saved emails over to use in the new Contact Center. Why can't I?
A: The purpose behind the new drag-and-drop editor in the new Contact Center is to build optimized HTML behind the scenes that uses the latest formatting and tricks to look as good as possible, in as many different email clients/devices as possible. The old Contact Center emails were built in a completely different way, and therefore cannot be retrofitted to the new tools. Doing so would literally undo the main benefit of using the new editor, which is that optimized code on the back end. While rebuilding an email for the first time may take a bit of extra time, once it's done you will have a new saved version that uses much cleaner code and ensures a better experience for your members.
Q: Can I still embed merged fields and Media Center content in the new version?
A: Yes! Right in with the rest of the Text fields in your text element, you have the option to include Merge fields from the profile to which the email is being sent. Click the Merge Tags dropdown in the text editing toolbar. This includes all standard and custom attributes that you can insert into the body of the text. To link to an MC Professional member page or file, you can click Site Links in the bottom left corner of the new editor and select from your organization's links to insert into the email. Click here to learn more.
Q: Can I directly edit the HTML of emails in the new editor?
A: As with the first question, the HTML that gets built from the drag-and-drop elements in the new editor are specifically built to optimize readability, and you cannot edit the code of those pre-built elements or the overall HTML of the entire email (you can export it for use in other tools, but it cannot be edited directly). However, there is an option to drag in an "HTML Block" which gives you complete control over the HTML that appears within the confines of that element. There is no limit to how much content you can put in those HTML elements, or how many you can use in an email. However, in general we recommend using those sparingly and only for small widgets or advanced features that you cannot otherwise implement using the drag-and-drop tools.
Q: Why can't I upload my image? It's showing a "Failed to upload image." error message.
A: Ensure it's a compatible image file - most common image files are JPG and PNG. Make sure the file name doesn't contain any special characters and is less than 25 characters in length.
Q: When will the old Contact Center go away?
A: Someday! We do plan on eliminating the old Contact Center and migrating all customers into the new one. However, we recognize that that takes time and effort to make sure all of your email content is moved into the new and improved version. Over the coming months, we'll be helping customers use email best practices to get all of the emails you use regularly built in the new Contact Center. Once we're seeing that most customers are using the new version, we'll start making announcements about deprecating the old version, and we will be able to personally contact any customers that we see still sending out of the old version to work with you to get your emails updated. Then, and only then, will we remove the old version of the Contact Center - but even then, we will provide you an archive so that you can always see the content in all of your previously saved and sent messages, those will never get deleted.