Adding promotions to your templates and campaigns

A promotion holds the ad itself and the rules for when it runs: which channels, which dates, and which zone. It doesn’t hold a newsletter. So a promotion only appears in a campaign that has a place ready for it. The easiest way to make sure every campaign has that place is to put it in your template once.

How a promotion finds its place

Zones are lettered slots, Zone A through Zone J. Two things carry a zone:

• The promotion. When you create a promotion in Promotions, you choose its zone.
• The Promotion block. In a template or a campaign, add a Promotion block and choose a zone in the block’s settings.

When a campaign is previewed and sent, Letterhead fills each Promotion block with the active promotions scheduled for that channel, on that send date, in the block’s zone. If nothing matches, the block stays out of the email, so no empty space goes to your readers.

Because the match happens at send time, you set up the block once and the promotions change on their own from one send to the next. Swap, reschedule or pause a promotion and the next campaign picks up the change.

Put the Promotion block in your template

1. Open the template your campaigns start from.
2. Add a Promotion block where the ad should sit, and choose its zone.
3. Repeat for each spot you sell or use for house ads, giving each its own zone.
4. Save the template.

Every campaign you create from that template from then on has the same slots. A campaign you’d already started keeps its own blocks, so add the Promotion block to it directly if it needs one.

A Promotion block also has layout settings: turn on 2-column promotion to show the promotions in its zone side by side, and choose whether they stack on phones.

Or let Letterhead place it for you

If a promotion should run in every send without a block, turn on Auto injection for newsletters when you create it and choose a Position (header, hero section, mid-body, bottom-body or footer) instead of a zone. Letterhead adds it to each send on its channels during its dates, and it’s locked in place in the campaign so it can’t be moved by accident. See Placing promotions automatically.

You can use both in the same campaign: auto-injected promotions in their positions, and zoned promotions in your Promotion blocks.

If a campaign has no slot for a scheduled promotion

When you reach a campaign’s preview step and a promotion is scheduled for that send date in a zone the campaign doesn’t have, Letterhead shows a notice naming the zone and the date. You can go back and add a Promotion block in that zone, or carry on without it. Auto-injected promotions never trigger this notice, because they don’t need a block.

Who does what

Promotions are created and scheduled in the company’s Promotions area by a company admin. Anyone who edits your templates or campaigns can add Promotion blocks and choose their zones.

If a promotion is active, scheduled for the send date, on the right channel and in a zone your campaign has, but still doesn’t show in the preview, that’s ours to look at. Contact support.

Related

• Finding your way around Promotions
• Setting up and placing promotions
• Running promotions across your portfolio