Newsletter Structure

This page will help outline how newsletters are structured, and what roll blocks and sections play in the overall layout of each newsletter.

Our new framework allows for a wide range of flexibility when it comes to designing your own newsletters. When coming up with your own unique design, we recommend that you follow the same general guidelines thorough your newsletters for ease of use and consistency, such as:

• Keeping all newsletters the same width.

• One or two columns per row, with the newsletter collapsing down to one-column on mobile.

• Light, neutral background color.

• Static footer for all newsletters - keep it simple and consistent with links such as opt-out and contact information.

"What is a 'Block'?"

Throughout the documentation, you'll hear mention of "Blocks" and "Block Layout". This is how we section the newsletter into individual styles. A "Block" is the style of that section in a newsletter. See how the example below is broken down in to "Blocks":

Each block will have a specific section assigned, which is how you'll schedule content to display on the newsletter. For example, in the above screenshot, the section of the bottom block is called "Contact Us". To get the contact "Al Bower" to appear, someone had to add a newsletter schedule to the "Contact Us" section from within Base.

Scheduling Content to Newsletters

Each block can have only one section, but the same section can be assigned to multiple blocks. For instance, in the above screenshot, blocks 1 and 4 could have the same section assigned - let's call this hypothetical section "News". This means if there are 2 pieces of content scheduled to "News", the first item would show up at the top in block 1, and the second item would show up down below in block 4, skipping blocks 2 and 3. This is done by assigning a Content Limit on blocks. In this example, block 1 will only allow one piece of content to display, so any other piece of content scheduled to "News" would flow down into the next "News" block.

Coming up with a list of sections

One of the benefits to using Base Platform for your newsletters is the ease of use and speed with which the content can be delivered. Many times, companies are often forced to manually code and build each deployment they send, which can be a very time-consuming process. By automating this process, the newsletters can be streamlined into a list of pre-defined sections that tell the newsletter where content should display.

Think of the newsletter structure like your website's homepage. There are likely various blocks on your homepage that correspond to sections of your website, where you can schedule content as a means of controlling where they appear on your homepage. For example, on this homepage, there are designated blocks for the sections of their website:

Each of those blocks on the homepage represent a section in the same way the newsletters will have sections. Much like the homepage, the newsletter sections don't change from week-to-week, and the structure of where each section is "baked" onto the newsletter remains the same.

The general structure of blocks and ads remain the same from deployment to deployment - they cannot be reordered for each deployment. In most cases, if there's nothing scheduled to a section of the newsletter, that block will collapse, but if the overall structure or order of the sections need to change, a separate newsletter can be built.

In the example below, "Advertisement" will always be at the top, then "Top Story", followed by "Highlights". If something's not scheduled to "Top Story", then that section will collapse, but you can't move "Highlights" above "Top Story". The section names, and order of sections are decided during the planning stages of the newsletter build.

Important to note: The styles of each block remain consistent. Think of each block as a different style. The first block pulling "Top Story" will be displayed at full-width, and all "Highlights" content will be displayed in two-columns. For additional styles, more blocks can be created.