After you've created your Dynamic asset, you're ready to start using it in an Email activity.

Dynamic Assets are created and designed the same way as Static Assets, but contain placeholders that are replaced with the data contained in your own external source (JSON, XML or RSS, 2.5MB max).

After you've created your Dynamic Asset, the next step is to connect your source file to populate your Dynamic Asset.

Open the Email activity you wish to work with. Click the Assets tab in the Design Panel.

Choose your Asset from the library and place it into the Email Canvas.

You can search for a specific Asset in the Search Bar, or manually scroll through the list. Change the list view by toggling between Thumbnails and List.

It's now time to set up your Dynamic Asset Settings!

Filter the items to be displayed in your Dynamic asset. The maximum number of items inserted into an Email activity is 50. To insert more items, you can add the Asset again. Filter them either by ID or by number of items.

To filter by ID, expand the Filter by ID dropdown menu.

Enter the IDs that correspond with your item's IDs in the Insert ID input field.

Make sure that your file has a clear item ID for each item. For example, if you only want products with IDs 1, 3 and 5 to be displayed in your feed, then enter 1, 3, 5. Items will be placed in the Email based on the order of the IDs inserted in the filtering option.

See the example below for an idea of IDs in a source file:

To filter by a number of items, expand the Filter by Number of Items dropdown menu and complete settings.

Choose whether you want the number of items displayed to be fetched from either the start or the end of your file.

Enter a number. For example, to fetch the first 3 items from your source file, the settings will look like this:

Enter the URL of your source file in the Feed URL box (JSON, XML or RSS, 2.5MB max). Jump to this article to read more about placeholders and sources.

We support the following Content-Type in GET and HEAD request response headers:

In these settings, you can determine a specific property in your file where the Asset should locate the content to fill your Asset's placeholders.

This is useful if your Dynamic asset only has content from nested items in your source file.

For example, in the source shown below, you can see the root item is not an array but an object. With source.items in the Property path settings, this feed can be used for a Dynamic Asset.

Time to choose how you would like the Asset to fetch the data from your file.

To fetch the data when you send this Email, click At send out. The Dynamic asset will fetch the data from your source and populate your Email when you send it. There are some aspects to consider, so we recommend that you head over to the Placeholders and sources article to learn more about the details.

To fetch the data now, and keep it as it is for the time of sending, click Fetch all.

The server that hosts your file source must accept HEAD requests. You can check if your server accepts them by using a REST & SOAP API testing tool, like this one.

When fetching the Dynamic asset's content from your source/remote server, Efficy Marketing will wait for up to 5 seconds for the server to respond. If the server doesn't respond, the request is canceled and an error message will be displayed.

The Dynamic asset will automatically fetch the data and replace your placeholders with the data in your file, and will be sent exactly as it is at this point in time.

If you filtered the items from your source file, you will see Fetch now instead.

Enter a name for your Row. It will be displayed on the Structure Panel, on the left.

After setting up your Dynamic asset, feel free to adjust the design. Do you need help with designing an Element in the Email editor? Jump to the article about Email Design elements.

Curious about the results?

Read more about Test and Preview in the Email editor's bottom bar.

Show different items to Profiles using Segmentation, and increase the chances of your recipients interacting with your Email activities.

To filter the items in your Dynamic asset based on Segments, you can add Segmentation already in your source file. You can also add Segmentation manually in the Row settings, if you prefer.

Take a look at the example below to see how a source file with Segmentation looks.

This example item will be excluded for all Profiles who match the "Male" Segment, and shown to any Profiles that match the "Sweden" Segment:

Placeholders and sources

Creating Dynamic asset

Email: Design elements