Messages and message models

Messages

The message data type is the most important part of a campaign. It is a conceptual representation of all the data required to create a campaign message of a particular type, such as an email or SMS message.

A message definition is made up of two parts. The Message element includes all the attributes that are common to different types of message. This is combined with the appropriate extension to complete the relevant definition.

Email or SMS

An email, SMS or fax message definition includes the following information:

Message models

Each message must have a parent message that is used as a message model. This acts as a template that includes the default attributes. See Managing message models for more details.

A message model can be reused to create one or more messages, applying the following parameters:

  • If no recipient and/or sender values are defined, the default values of the message model are applied
  • You can override the content and sender attributes of the message model for each campaign
  • You can override the recipients attribute of the message model with a new one, provided that you use the same subscriber source
    • You can always specify a different subscriber source filter
  • You can override the subscriber source filter of the message model

Note:

If you normally send to one subscriber source from the same sender, we strongly recommend that you create and reuse a message model. In addition to other advantages, it also helps to preventing errors and keep the configuration of your own applications as simple as possible.

Message and message model elements

Click the appropriate link for more details about the relevant element: