Getting Started with FeedOtter's Email Template Language

When creating custom email templates with FeedOtter's email template language, there are some basic guidelines you should follow. These guidelines are intended to serve as a foundation for best practices when using FeedOtter's template language.

In this article, you'll learn how to get started with FeedOtter's template language.

Things to know

• FeedOtter uses a slightly modified version of the TWIG template syntax

Loops

Loops are the heart of every FeedOtter email. FeedOtter displays articles and content by looping through the number of articles you wish to show. In FeedOtter they look like this:

<!--## [% for post in feedotter.posts %] ##-->
... display content from an individual ITEM ...
<!--## [% endfor %] ##-->

To learn more about loops and how they are used read Anatomy of a FeedOtter Template.

Conditionals

You can show or hide portions of an email based on properties in the content using conditionals such as IF and IF/ELSE.

For a full list of conditionals and example code read Conditionals.

Merge tokens

Merge tokens insert article data from rss feeds and content sources into your email.

• Use campaign tokens to insert data that is related to the FeedOtter campaign. Examples are inserting the date an automated email is sent or placing the name of the campaign in the <title> tag of an email.

• Use post loop tokens INSIDE the LOOP of your FeedOtter email. When used they will insert text from your data source such as post title, description, featured image, URL, etc...

• Use UI tokens to interact with the FeedOtter "edit" UI. Examples include: primary color, button color. When coding your own template we recommend hard-coding your colors and skipping these tokens.

• Use custom tokens to make parts of your email editable from the FeedOtter interface. Customers use these to allow for custom image uploads, text and headline updates and more. Campaigns are limited to 10 custom tokens per template.

See the full list of FeedOtter tokens here.

External ESP Tokens

You may also use ESP tokens in your FeedOtter emails. Unsubscribe, View as Webpage are several common examples. These ESP tokens are supported in the following areas:

• HTML template code

• Subject lines

• Custom fields

Testing

We recommend testing your FeedOtter campaigns with a test subscriber list of contacts before sending to your real audience.

When we test internally, we set our ESP settings to target a test/internal list of subscribers:

• Marketo - Done in Marketo on the ### - Email Setup program

• All other ESPs - Done in the FeedOtter Integration settings

Then use FeedOtter's Send Now feature to trigger an instant send from your ESP. This will allow you to verify the full email send process and delivered email code.

Quick links

• Anatomy of a FeedOtter Template