Shared Assets

Shared assets provide a convenient way to apply consistent content such as headers, footers, product grids, and promotion banners across multiple templates by reusing snippets of code. By re-using shared assets such as headers or footers across emails, you can easily manage changes or updates across all templates by making the changes only once and then having those changes applied automatically across all templates that use the asset. User attributes, recommendation variables, and Liquid logic can also be used in shared assets.

Common use-cases for shared assets include:

• Header
• Footer
• Product Grids
• Promotion banners
• Subject line
• Rich text

You can define the shared asset once and reuse it across multiple email templates. Each shared asset has its own unique tag, which can be used to reference a shared asset from the template.

To keep your email code clean, you can reuse the code in a shared asset in other shared assets. This is referred to as nesting. The shared asset that is used in another shared asset is called a ‘nested shared asset’.

Types of shared assets

Blueshift supports three types of shared assets:

• HTML: These include HTML code that you can reuse across templates.
• Subject line: Reuse in subject lines of emails.
• Rich text: The rich text assets provide an option to include text content in templates that have some formatting applied to them. Such as, font color, font family, and lists.

View shared assets

You can view all your shared assets templates by going to Creatives > Shared Assets on the left navigation panel.

When you open a shared asset template you can also see the list of templates where it's being used.

Add a shared asset template

To add a shared asset template, complete the following steps:

1. Click +ASSET.
2. Add a Name for the asset.
3. Optionally define its organization by using tags and tag folders.
4. Select the Asset Type. You can select HTML, Rich text, or Subject line as the asset type.
5. Specify the content based on the asset type. You can use user or recommendation variables, as well as Liquid logic within the shared asset. You can also see a Preview of the content.
6. You can enable the “Use the content below to replace the system generated plain text content” option to specify optional Plain Text content. However, we recommend that you exercise caution when you use this option since the content you specify here is used in all the emails that use this asset.
7. Save the template.
8. Note the Reference String for the asset. The reference string is used to refer to an asset in an email template.

You can also check out our How to video for creating shared assets.

Asset Types

You can select HTML, Rich text, or Subject line as the asset type for a shared asset template.

HTML templates

Rich Text templates

Subject line templates

Use shared assets in email templates

Each shared asset has a Reference String which is used in an email template to include the shared asset. You can include multiple shared assets in an email template.

Location	Reference string
HTML editor	<shared_asset>bsft_demo_text</shared_asset>
Visual editor	[shared_asset]bsft_demo_text[/shared_asset]
Subject line and Preheader (for both HTML and Visual editors)	<shared_asset>bsft_demo_text</shared_asset>

HTML Editor

Visual Editor

Lock an asset

As an owner of a shared asset or an admin user, you can lock the asset so that other users cannot accidentally edit it. Other users can request edit access to your assets and you can unlock them as and when appropriate.

• To lock an asset, open the asset template and click Lock.
• To unlock an asset as an admin or for which you are the owner, open the asset template and click Unlock.
• To request access to a template that is locked, open the asset template and click Request Access.
• You can also use the Lock option on the shared asset listing page to lock a shared asset.

Delete an asset

• Use the Remove option on the shared asset listing page to delete a shared asset. 
• A shared asset cannot be deleted if it is being referenced in any templates or shared assets.