Getting Started with Matik Mail

Mail Overview

Matik Mail makes it easy to bring personalized, data-driven presentations & one-pagers to all your prospects and customers by automating the sending of Matik-generated content as email attachments.

Mail Setup

Requirements

An active Matik Enterprise license that supports Mail
A custom email domain for your enterprise (e.g. @matik.io)
The ability to add DNS records to your domain host (Your IT Team or Email Admin can likely help you with this)
HTML versions of the email templates you wish to use with Matik Mail

Authenticating your Domain

Setup of Matik Mail requires authenticating your email domain with Matik Mail. This enables Matik to send emails on your behalf. Matik Mail will work without completing this step; however, your emails will be displayed as being sent from Sendgrid or Matik and are more likely to be marked as spam by your recipient’s email providers.

To start the authentication process, log into Matik and navigate to Enterprise Settings (You must be a producer admin in Matik). Scroll to the Matik mail section and click “Start Authentication”. (If you do not see this screen, it is possible Matik mail isn’t turned on for your enterprise. Contact your account manager or Matik Support - support@matik.io)

Enter a subdomain for your email. The subdomain you enter will appear on the “mailed-by” field in the emails you send out from Matik (See screenshot below for an example).

The subdomain you enter shouldn’t be currently used by your domain for email. We recommend using the subdomain “matikmail”. In that configuration, mailed-by for a company with the domain simpleticket.com would appear as matikmail.simpleticket.com. This will not impact the from or reply to fields.

Click on the “Generate Record” button. You will be presented with a JSON Record text file which will need to be added to the DNS record of your domain host. You will likely need to work with your organization’s IT Department or the Administrator of your organization’s email to complete this step.

Your domain host typically publishes your DNS records within a few minutes of requesting it. However, this can take as long as 48 hours. When you have confirmed with your domain host or gotten confirmation from your IT org that your domain host has published the DNS Records, the final step is to press “Validate Records” on the “Authenticate Your Domain” page in Matik settings.

If you need to change your subdomain for Matik Mail, you can do so using the “Regenerate Record” button.

Creating Matik Mail Templates

Matik mail uses the same inputs and dynamic content as Matik Presentations allowing you to manage dynamic content across mail and presentations seamlessly. If you are new to Matik and unfamiliar with adding data sources and creating Inputs and Dynamic Content, we recommend you check out our Matik Overview for Generating Content. You must be an admin to create Matik Mail templates.

To get started, click on the “Presentations” tab and click on “+ New Template”. A new screen will appear, asking if you want to select a presentation or email narrative. Click on “Add Email Template”. (If you do not see this screen, it is possible Matik mail isn’t turned on for your enterprise. Contact your account manager or Matik Support - support@matik.io)

The email template setup screen will appear. Here you can configure your email’s subject, recipients, sender, and body. More details on all of this are below.

Overview of Dynamic Content in Matik Mail

Dynamic content can be inserted into your email’s subject and body by putting the name of your dynamic content between double curly brackets {{dynamic_content_name}}. Currently, only Text and Image dynamic content are supported by Matik Mail. Charts and Table Dynamic Content is not supported. Charts from BI Tools (Tableau, Power BI) that insert content as images are currently supported by Matik Mail.

Adding a Subject

Click on “Add Subject” to add a subject to your email. Enter Text dynamic content, if desired, in double curly brackets.

Adding Dynamic Recipients

Matik Mail uses Dynamic Recipients to determine the recipients list for an email. Dynamic Recipients are a new form of Dynamic Content that allows end users to use Matik inputs to determine to who an email is sent.

To get started creating Dynamic Recipients, click on “Add Recipients”.

If you haven’t created a list of dynamic recipients, click on “Create recipient list”.

You will now see the familiar dynamic content creation modal. Fill this out as you would other dynamic content. For Dynamic Recipients Dynamic Content, you must choose “Data-Driven” as the content type. Hint: if you want to send to a static list of email addresses, connect to a static google sheet or create a static query on a database. E.g., “SELECT ‘example@email.com’”. After you select your data source, you must select “Recipients” as your dynamic content output type.

Recipients' Dynamic Content must return data as a single column, with each email address represented as a new row. Each email address returned by your Dynamic Recipients List will receive an individual email with Matik Mail, even if they are in the same organization.

For example, I want to send a Matik email to all Salesforce contacts with the role “Admins” at a specific account determined by an account input:

Name the Dynamic Content
Select “Data-Driven"
Select your Data Source: “Salesforce Production”
Select Dynamic Contact Type: “Recipients”
Add the appropriate object/ report selection and filters to get the list of “Admins” you desire. In our example, we want to return emails from the contact object with Contact Role = Admin. The input SFDC_Account_name is filled out by end users when sending an email to determine which account’s Admins the email will be sent to.

The recipients returned will only be as accurate as your data. As a best practice, users should review the final recipients' list after generating an email prior to sending.

Test your new dynamic recipients list thoroughly and click “Save” when completed.
Add any emails you want CC’d with this template. Currently, CC’d recipients are limited to Matik users.
Finally, press “Add Recipients” to return to the main template page.

Bulk Generating with Matik Mail

Matik Mail can bulk-generate emails, enabling an end user to send personalized emails to multiple accounts (or other inputs) simultaneously. Matik Mail will bulk generate on the first input used by Dynamic Recipients. This means the same input must be used across all other Dynamic Content in the template to create personalized content.

For example, let's say we used the Dynamic Recipients list exampled above in a Mail Template. The input SFDC_Account_Name, must be used in all dynamic content unique across accounts.

Additionally, all recipients will be sent individual emails. For example, I bulk send an email template with the bulk input SFDC_Account_Name to Google, Simpleticket, and Microsoft. Since multiple emails can be returned per account in my Dynamic Recipients criteria, this email will be sent to 2 people from Google, 1 from Simpleticket, and 3 from Microsoft. Provided I used the SFDC_Account_Name input in all dynamic content, each person will be individually sent an email customized to their organization.

When bulk generating, select multiple values for the bulk input. Currently, there is no indicator that an input is bulkable. Exercise caution when filling out inputs to ensure you are not multi-selecting other inputs that are not bulkable.

Adding a From Field

Next, click on “Add From”. Enter your desired “from” fields. Currently, the from field cannot be altered by end users and each template will have a static from field.

Create your Email Body

Next, create your HTML email body.

In the code section of the template, enter the HTML code you wish to power your email. Delete the existing example code to ensure it does not interfere with your code.

Using Dynamic Content within your Matik Mail body

Matik Mail currently supports text and image dynamic content types. Charts from BI tools such as looker and tableau are also supported since they are treated as images within Matik.

Text Dynamic Content

Text dynamic content is inserted into Matik by entering the name of the Dynamic Content between double curly brackets {{dynamic_content_name}}.

You can add formatting within Matik Mail by entering | followed by a Matik formatting function. For example, {{hours_saved|numberformat(2)}}. For more on Matik formatting, see the Formatting section of the Tagging Overview help article.

Image Dynamic Content

Image dynamic content is tagged by entering the double curly brackets tag as the src value in an html image tag. E.g. <img src={{image_dynamic_content_name}}> Matik will obtain the appropriate image URL from the dynamic content. No quotation marks around the dynamic content tags are needed.

Debugging

HTML syntax errors are denoted by a red X next to the line with the issue.

Previewing your Email

When your HTML is inserted and tagged, you can preview the formatting of your email by clicking on the “Preview” button.

Text dynamic content will display as plain text tags, and images will not be present. You can test dynamic content in the next section.

Attaching Matik Presentations

Matik Mail supports the attachment of Matik Presentations. These presentations are automatically generated when the email is generated. The presentation generator will have to fill out any additional inputs required for the presentation.

To attach a presentation to a template, click “Add Email Attachment” under the body text. Next, select the Matik Presentation template you which to attach. The presentation will be attached to the email in PDF format.

Currently, static file attachments are not supported. If you use bulk generation with Matik Mail, all attached presentations must use the same bulkable input as the email template.

Generating Emails with Matik Mail

When you have completed the setup of your template, switch to the Generate tab at the top of the template. Fill out the inputs on the left side of the screen and click on the “Send Email” dropdown.

“Send Test Email” Creates a test email that is sent to the email associated with your Matik account using the values from the inputs you entered. The email is not sent to the Dynamic Recipients in the “to” field, or any of the CC’d recipients. You will still have the opportunity to preview the email before it is sent to you.

“Preview and Send Emails” Creates a preview of the email and your attachments based on the inputs you entered to view before you send your email to its target recipient.

If the information in the email and attachment looks correct, scroll down and click “Generate Emails” to send. You will see a confirmation screen that emails are generating. You will receive an email from Matik when your email(s) send.

Viewing Generating and Sent emails

Navigate to the Presentations tab to see current and previously generated emails.

Troubleshooting

Error Message

This error message is often the result of unnecessary curly brackets in your HTML code. Some HTML email generators use {{{tag_name}}} for tagging. Ensure your email doesn’t contain any curly brackets outside of Matik Mail formatting. Hint: doing a text find (CMD +F) for “{“ or “}” in your email body code can help identify the issue.

You can also prevent Matik from tagging brackets by enclosing HTML in {% raw %} {{bracket text here}}}} {% endraw %}.

My Dynamic Recipients list isn't showing up on the select Dynamic Recipients dropdown

It is likely the Dynamic Content type is wrong. Ensure the "Recipients" is selected on your Dynamic Content.