Everything you need to know about Adobe Message Center

What is Message Center?

Message Center is an Adobe Campaign module that allows the user to manage personalized transactional emails that are sent out individually in real-time.

API Connection to Message Center

First, the customer takes an action. This action comes into the central messaging hub as an event. The event could be an order placement, a password reset request, a change to an account, or an account creation.

The event then triggers a transactional message to send out using the API connection to Message Center. Based on the event type, the message template is selected. Then, the data from the event payload dynamically populates the transactional message template and sends out the message automatically.

Different instances and how they work

There are two types of instances for Message Center: Control and Execution. They can occur in one instance, but they are typically located in separate instances and there can be more than one execution instance.

The control instance is used to configure transactional messaging events and templates. Templates are then published to the execution instance after they are created.

The control instance includes one technical workflow that is scheduled to run every hour. This workflow performs the following:

• Recovers the list of processed events also referred to as Event History.
• Synchronizes with NmsBroadLoadMsg table to recover delivery message qualifications and recovers event delivery logs as soon as synchronization is complete.
• Synchronizes with NMSTrackingUrl table to recover the tracking for delivery URLs and recovers event tracking URLs as soon as synchronization is complete.
• Enables you to recover all email addresses placed in quarantine every three hours after a delivery has been sent.

The execution instance, or instances, receive incoming events and send out messages.

The execution instance includes the three technical workflows:

1. Update event status
2. Processing batch events
3. Processing real-time events

The workflow that updates event statuses allows the user to assign a status to an event.

The possible statuses are:

• Pending: The event is in the queue. There is no associated message template yet.
• Pending delivery: The event is in a queue, a message template is associated, and the event is being processed by the delivery.
• Sent: This status is copied from the delivery logs. Delivery has been sent.
• Ignored by the delivery: This status is copied from the delivery logs. Delivery was ignored.
• Delivery error: This status is copied from the delivery logs. The delivery failed.
• Event not covered: The event has failed to be associated with a message template. *

*Note: The event will not be reprocessed in this case.

The workflows that process batch events and real-time events enable the user to put an event into a queue before associating them with a message template. These are separate workflows.

Templates and personalization

Here are some examples of various transactional email templates with how they are or can be personalized.

Shipment confirmation email from Macy’sThis shipment confirmation email includes the customer’s name, the order number, the order date, and the payment method. It also has two links to track the package.

Card abandonment email from The Vitamin ShoppeThis email included the product that was left in the cart with an efficient link directly above it, so the consumer could go to their cart and complete their purchase. To personalize the email The Vitamin Shoppe also included the consumers name and their account statistics.

Below is a preview of how you can personalize transactional message templates in Adobe Campaign Classic: