Migrating from Triggered Emails to Reconnect

If you've been using Triggered Emails for email campaigns, you must now activate Reconnect instead and migrate your campaigns to Reconnect, as described in this article. 

Important to know before you get started

The way we recommend approaching this migration is to copy your campaigns from Triggered Emails, then make necessary changes (variables and JSON objects) to conform to the Reconnect app, and only when you are finished, delete your Triggered Emails campaigns. This means that you must maintain your campaigns on Reconnect as drafts, and publish them after the Triggered Email campaigns are no longer active. You should never have the same campaign active in both apps. 

The following are differences between Triggered Emails and Reconnect that you should be aware of. They are described further in their respective steps, but keep these differences in mind as you complete the migration:

• Empty values: Unlike Triggered Emails, you can expect empty values in the JSON body when Reconnect sends the message. To resolve, use your ESP syntax that enables conditional display of components. 
• Strategies: Reconnect does not use recommendation blocks. Instead, it uses strategies (defined in your Assets) to inject recommendations. 
• Variables: Reconnect enables you to inject dynamic content as variables using different logic than Triggered Emails, so you'll have to recreate them. 
• No experiences: Reconnect includes variations but no experiences. 

Step 1: Set up the ESP Integration

For detailed instructions on integrating one of the ESPs supported in Reconnect, see Reconnect Email Integration. The ESP integration appears in the Integrations tab in the Reconnect app.

Step 2: Recreate your campaigns in Reconnect

Because the multi-channel campaign structure in Reconnect is different than that of Triggered Emails, you must recreate your campaigns manually.

2. Create your campaigns as drafts in Reconnect, and copy+paste the code.
   Remember: Reconnect campaign structure does not support experiences. If you have campaigns with multiple experiences, each experience should be recreated as a separate Reconnect campaign, with its relevant targeting audience and variations. 
3. For recommendations: Use the variable called Recommendation Block to call a strategy that you must create. You can do this in one of 2 ways: 
   •  Directly from the JSON editor: In the Variables tab, select the Recommendation Block variable, and from the variable’s dropdown, select Create New Strategy.
     
   • Go to Assets › Strategies › Create Strategy. Create the strategy as needed, and set the Page Type to Reconnect App.
     
4. Edit your variables as needed. 
5. When all the campaigns are recreated in Reconnect, delete or pause the campaigns in Triggered Emails.
6. Publish your Reconnect campaigns.

Handling empty values in your ESP 

Unlike Triggered Emails, in the Reconnect JSON message body, variables are sometimes converted into empty values. 

To support the logic where empty values lead to an HTML component not being displayed, most ESPs offer a syntax solution for "conditional display" as part of their HTML code editor (see SendGrid as a reference).

Example: A Cart Abandonment email message has variables for 3 cart items (see screenshot). A user who triggers this campaign added only 2 items to their cart. In this case, the variables of the first 2 objects of “Items in cart” (item 1 and item 2) are populated with values from the feed, but the third object’s values remain empty. 

The Reconnect JSON body sample:  

The following payload is expected to be sent to the ESP when a user abandons 2 items in their cart: 

Here is an example of how it might look on the ESP side, in this case for SendGrid. Remember that each ESP has its own syntax: