Get Started with Transactional messaging send-transactional-messages
Transactional messaging (Message Center) is a Campaign module designed for managing trigger messages. These notifications are generated from events triggered from information systems, and can be: invoice, order confirmation, shipping confirmation, password change, product unavailability notification, account statement, website account creation, etc.
Transactional messages are used to send:
- notifications, such as order confirmations or password resets for example
- an individual real-time response to a customer action
- non-promotional content
Transactional messaging settings are detailed in this section.
Understand transactional messaging architecture on this page.
Transactional messaging operating principle transactional-messaging-operating-principle
The Adobe Campaign Transactional messaging module integrates into an information system which returns events to be changed into personalized transactional messages. These messages can be sent individually or in batches via email, SMS or push notifications.
For example, imagine you are a company with a website where your customers can buy products.
Adobe Campaign allows you to send a notification email to customers who have added products to their cart. When one of them leaves your website without going through with their purchases (external event which triggers a Campaign event), a cart abandonment email is automatically sent to them (transactional message delivery).
The main steps for putting this into place are detailed below:
- Create an event type.
- Create and design the message template. You must link an event to your message during this step.
- Test the message.
- Publish the message template.
Once you designed and published the transactional message template, if a corresponding event is triggered, the relevant data are sent to Campaign via the PushEvent and PushEvents SOAP methods, and the delivery is sent to the targeted recipients.
Create event types create-event-types
To make sure each event can be changed into a personalized message, you first need to create event types.
When creating a message template, you will select the type of event that matches the message you want to send.
To create event types that will be processed by Adobe Campaign, follow the steps below:
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Browse to the Administration > Platform > Enumerations folder of Campaign explorer.
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Select the Event type enumeration from the list.
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Click Add to create an enumeration value. This can be an order confirmation, password change, order delivery change, etc.
note caution CAUTION Each event type must match a value in the Event type enumeration. -
Once the itemized list values have been created, log off and back on to your instance for the creation to be effective.
Define a transactional message template create-message-template
Each event can trigger a a personalized message. For this to happen, you need to create a message template to match each event type. Templates contain the necessary information for personalizing the transactional message. You can also use templates to test the message preview and send proofs using seed addresses before delivering to the final target.
Create the template
To create a message template, follow the steps below:
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Go to the Message Center >Transactional message templates folder in the Adobe Campaign tree.
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In the list of transactional message templates, right-click and select New in the drop-down menu or click the New button above the list of transactional message templates.
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In the delivery window, select the delivery template suitable for the channel you want to use.
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Change its label if necessary.
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Select the type of event that matches the message you want to send. Event types destined to be processed by Adobe Campaign must be created beforehand. Learn more
note caution CAUTION An event type should never be linked to more than one template. -
Enter a nature and a description, then click Continue to create the message body.
Create the content create-message-content
The definition of the transactional message content is the same as for all deliveries in Adobe Campaign. For instance, for an email delivery, you can create content in HTML or text format, add attachments or personalize the delivery object. Learn more.
Unlike in JSSP or webApp,
<%= doesn’t have any default escaping.Once you have defined your message content, you can integrate event information into the message body and personalize it. Event information is inserted into the body of the text thanks to personalization tags.
- All the personalization fields are coming from the payload.
- It is possible to reference one or several personalization blocks in a transactional message.
To insert personalization tags into the body of an email message, apply the following steps:
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In the message template, click the tab that matches the email format (HTML or text).
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Enter the body of the message.
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In the body of the text, insert the tag using the Real time events>Event XML menus.
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Fill in the tag using the following syntax: element name.@attribute name as shown below.
Test the transactional message template test-message-template
Add seed addresses add-seeds
A seed address lets you display a preview of your message, send a proof, and test message personalization before sending the message. Seed addresses are linked to the delivery and cannot be used for other deliveries.
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In the transactional message template, click the Seed addresses tab, then click the Add button.
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Assign a label to it for easy selection later, then enter the seed address (email or mobile phone depending on the communication channel).
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Enter the external identifier: this optional field allows you to enter a business key (unique ID, name + email, etc.) that is common to all applications on your website, used to identify your profiles. If this field is also present in the Adobe Campaign marketing database, you can then reconcile an event with a profile in the database.
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Insert test data. Refer to this section.
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Click Ok to confirm the creation of the seed address.
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Repeat the process to create as many addresses as you need.
Once the addresses are created, you can access their preview and personalization.
Preview your transactional message transactional-message-preview
Once you have created one or more seed addresses and the message body, you can preview the message and check its personalization.
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In the message template, click the Preview tab, then select A seed address in the drop-down list.
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Select the seed address created previously to display the personalized message.
Send a proof
You can test message delivery by sending a proof to a previously created seed address.
Sending a proof involves the same process as for any delivery. Learn more about proofs in this section.
However, to send a proof of a transactional message, you need to carry out the following operations:
- Create one or more seed addresses with personalization test data
- Create the message content
To send the proof:
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Click the Send a proof button in the delivery window.
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Analyze the delivery.
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Correct any errors and confirm the delivery.
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Check that the message was delivered to the seed address and that its content complies with your configuration.
Proofs can be accessed in each template via the Audit tab.
Publish the template publish-message-template
When the message template created is complete, you can publish it, which will allow you to send messages linked to real-time and batch events.
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Go to the Message Center > Transactional message templates folder of the tree.
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Select the template you want to publish.
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Click Publish.
Once publication is complete, both message templates to be applied to batch and real-time type events are created in the Administration > Production > Message Center Execution> Default > Transactional message templates folder.
Once a template is published, if the corresponding event is triggered, Adobe Campaign will receive the event, link it to the transactional template and send the corresponding transactional message to each recipient.
Unpublish a template
Once a message template is published , it can be unpublished.
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Indeed, a published template can still be called if the corresponding event is triggered: if you are no longer using a message template, it is recommended to unpublish it. This is to avoid sending an unwanted transactional message by mistake.
For example, you published a message template that you only use for Christmas campaigns. You may want to unpublish it after the Christmas period is over, and publish it again next year.
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Also, you cannot delete a transactional message template that has the Published status. You must unpublish it first.
To unpublish a transactional message template, follow the steps below.
- Browse to the Message Center > Transactional message templates folder.
- Select the template to unpublish.
- Click Unpublish.
- Click Start.
The transactional message template status changes back from Published to Being edited.
Once unpublication is complete:
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Both message templates (applied to batch and real-time type events) are deleted.
They no longer appear in the Administration > Production > Message Center Execution > Default > Transactional message templates folder.
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Once a template is unpublished, you can delete it.
To do so, select it from the list and click the Delete button on top right of the screen.