Introducing the New Email Designer in SAS Customer Intelligence 360

[#1]

Introduction

The Email Task capabilities of SAS Customer Intelligence 360 (CI 360) enable marketing professionals to design effective email campaigns. Whether creating a task for a triggered or bulk campaign or using on-premises or cloud data, users start the design process by clicking on the “Add content” button in the main Email Task page.

There were historically two ways to create HTML content; The Layout Manager and the HTML Editor. From March 2026, users will be able to use another method; the Email Designer.

Both the Layout Manager and Email Designer options will be available in parallel for the foreseeable future, although the plan is to eventually retire the Layout Manager. The HTML Editor will remain available throughout this transition. Users of Layout Manager are therefore encouraged to create new email tasks using the Email Designer. This ensures full functionality is available over the long term. Regardless of the UI you choose, the HTML generated is similar and the way you use the resulting Email Task is exactly the same.

The Email Designer is third party design software created by a company called Stripo, which has been completely integrated into the CI 360 environment. As it is third party software, full training is created and maintained externally. There is a link to this training at the end. However, we will cover some of the basics in this blog.

Overview

Selecting the Email Designer option brings us to the main UI:

We are able to access Responsive Previews and Link Tracking settings at the top left. These work in exactly the same way as for the Layout Manager. At the top right we can also save the task, and undo or redo changes. We can click on the Code Editor icon to view and edit the raw HTML. There are also toggle buttons to change the appearance to show either the mobile or desktop view.

On the left-hand side, we have some objects that we can add into the main canvas. These are as follows:

The middle canvas is split into distinct rows, or stripes, as they are referred to. We can add objects from the left-hand side just by dragging and dropping them to the middle canvas. When adding images or videos, you can choose items in the existing gallery. We also have the option to add to the gallery either by uploading or specifying a URL.

It should be noted that any Assets already stored in CI 360 are not automatically accessible from this gallery. As its third-party software, it’s not fully compatible with the CI 360 filesystem. However, it is possible to add the URL that points to the asset in the CI 360 asset library and then access them in this way. We can also select an image either from any URL, or from the “Frontify” platform if a user has a license.

The main canvas has a descending hierarchy of elements. Stripes are on top of the hierarchy, then we have structures, containers, and blocks. The blocks are the individual components you can drag and drop from the left-hand side, and each container can contain multiple blocks. Each element contains the lower elements in the hierarchy in a nested layout.

New structures can be added using the icon at the top left, and as part of this, you can specify the number of containers that it has.

You can also add and delete structures in the canvas itself. Stripes, structures, containers, and blocks can be saved for re-use. And when saved, they are referred to as modules.

If we go to the ellipses icon in any object in the hierarchy, we see an option to save it:

We can give it a name and optional description and icon. There is also a synchronized toggle button. If you toggle to enable the synchronization, any changes made to the module will be propagated to any other task where the module’s synchronization is enabled. Additionally, when you make a change to a module from the main canvas, you are presented with three options; to update the master module, revert back to what the master module is, or break the link with the master module. Saved modules can be accessed and added using the same icon at the top left.

The right-hand side shows the configuration for each element selected in the content. When no elements are selected, we see a series of tabs that control the global settings of the email design. It is a good idea to start with these.

We see some general settings in the Global Styles and Layout tab:

We can set the background color or a background image. We can also control the width, alignment, padding, and margins of the message.

We then see a tab for the Stripe Styles:

These are divided into the header, content, footers and info areas. For each section we can control the font type, size and colour, as well as any background colors and images used.

The next tab, Heading Styles, lets you define a heading and its associated font and style:

This means you can assign a heading to any text you add, and the text will automatically take on the heading style that you have set.

And finally, the Button Styles tab controls the look and feel of any buttons added to your email:

When we select a stripe, we can see the settings for that particular stripe. Similarly, we can select a structure, container, or block object and the controls will change to control just that object.

We can click “OK” at any time, to save the content and return to the main Email Task page. Note that, if we were to click on the Edit icon within the contents section to re-open it, only the Email Designer option is selectable:

This also applies to content created in Layout Manager. Only the originating editor can be used to re-open existing content.

Users can also save the email as a template just like they can do for emails created in the Layout Manager.

Further Information

More information, including links to the external training, can be found in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 User Guide available here.

The Email Designer is discussed in more details in the “Email Development and Delivery with SAS Customer Intelligence 360” course, which is part of the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Learning Curriculum.