Working with Ads

The XSellerate marketing system provides a built‑in editor you can use to personalize any of the ads in the Ad Library. Whenever you edit one of the stock ads, XSellerate creates a new copy of that ad with your changes, leaving the original intact. You can also use the editor to create your own ads from scratch.

• To create a new ad from scratch, in XSellerate, click the Create Ads link in the Settings pane.
• To customize a stock XSellerate ad, find the ad in the ad library, click to select it, and then click Edit in the Preview pane.

  Our built‑in ad editor has a lot in common with modern word processors making it easy to edit ads to your liking. For specific instructions about using this editor, see the Content Editor section of this user's guide.

  

When using XSellerate's custom ad editor, keep a few things in mind:

• When you first open an ad in the editor, you're warned about text enclosed in brackets {}. These are special codes that are replaced with text when the ad is sent.
• The Ad Description field at top of the editor to name your document allows you to name the ad so that you can effectively find and use the ad as you build your campaigns. Name your ad something descriptive and bear in mind that this description is NOT the same thing as the subject line that appears when you deliver the ad. You edit the subject line for the ad when you're actually scheduling it out in the campaign creation process. One example of a good ad name might be "New Clients Drip Campaign Message 1 (Emphasizing Online Tools)".
• You can learn more about the function of any button in the editor by hovering your mouse momentarily over it or clicking the blue help icon in the top toolbar for a full list of descriptions for each button.
• You can compose both plain text ads and beautiful image backed ads. Keep in mind, though, that not every type of ad will get through to every contact. Standard HTML message ads that contain images, hyperlinks, and other advanced content can occasionally trigger SPAM blockers to falsely identify your message as SPAM, reducing ad exposure. And due to the limitations of some mail browsers, some recipients may not see the ad the same way as it is displayed in the preview window. The overwhelming majority of people use an email client that can view these HTML messages as designed, but even these people may configure their email clients to view messages in plain text. This may cause your messages to these people to display oddly. A good approach is to balance plain text ads with standard HTML ads containing images, links, etc. While not every message will find its way onto the desks of every contact, this approach still helps you balance ad effectiveness with maximum ad exposure.
• The Merge Fields drop‑down menu gives you a variety of placeholders for information that varies from one message to the next or information about your office that may change over time. You can identify these placeholders as they are denoted in red and surrounded by brackets. For example, the placeholder for the contact's first name is {#FirstName#}. The Merge Fields menu is broken up into three types of dynamically inserted fields.
  • Contact Fields are those that pull information from your Contacts database when you send the ad. This allows you to customize your communications using your contact's name and other personal information.
  • My Fields are those that pull information from your company profile.
  • Date Fields allow you to insert codes that are replaced by the current date whenever the ad is sent out.

  Working with these fields can be tricky. If you select a field that may not have information in it for every contact — the PrimaryAddress2 Contact Field, for instance — you may get odd results on some of your campaigns.

As always, remember to click Save at the bottom of the ad editor when you're through writing your ad.