Campaign banners

A banner is an image injected above or below every rendered signature while its window is open. It needs no template edit, and it removes itself when the window closes.

This is the marketing surface. An event, a campaign, a seasonal message: set the window and forget about it.

Creating a banner

Create a banner in the Banners view. It needs a campaign name, an image, a position relative to the signature, and a window. A click-through link and alt text are offered alongside them and neither is required.

The image follows the same rules as any signature image: PNG or JPG, no SVG, sized sensibly since it is attached to every message anyone sends while the window is open. It is chosen from the images already uploaded, so upload it under Images first if it is not there yet.

The campaign name is how the banner is listed and how its clicks are reported, so it is worth naming for the campaign rather than for the file.

A banner with no link is a picture rather than a call to action, which is the right shape for an announcement nobody is meant to click. Leaving alt text blank falls back to the campaign name, so a recipient reading with images switched off sees something rather than nothing.

Scheduling

A banner’s start and end are authored as a wall-clock time in an IANA time zone that you choose.

That matters more than it sounds. A campaign can be scheduled for a region other than the one the administrator sits in, and daylight saving is handled correctly: a banner set to end at 23:59 on a date does so at 23:59 local to the chosen zone, whichever side of a clock change that falls on.

The portal shows the window back to you in the zone you chose, rather than converting it to yours.

Opening or closing a window takes effect immediately. The active banner is part of the rendered-signature cache key, so there is nothing to wait for and nothing to purge.

Position

A banner sits either above or below the signature.

Below is the usual choice. It keeps the signature immediately under the message body, where readers expect it, and treats the banner as an appendix. Above works when the campaign is the point and the signature is context.

Click tracking

Where a banner carries a link, its click-throughs are always tracked. Banner links are routed through tracked links automatically, and there is no opt-out.

No IP address and no recipient identity is logged, so a banner tells you how many people clicked, not who.

Totals appear in the Link clicks view, rolled up per banner rather than per URL, so a campaign pointing at three destinations reads as one number. Security scanners that pre-fetch every link in a message are counted separately and kept out of that number, which matters most for a banner because a banner is measured on its click rate.

Who can manage banners

Admins and the Marketing role, and nobody else.

Marketing reaches campaign banners and link click analytics and nothing else, which is usually the right level for a marketing team: they can run campaigns without being able to change the signature templates or reach billing.

The Editor role does not reach banners. Editors own the template a banner is attached to, but a campaign is a separate thing with its own schedule and its own owner, so the two are granted separately.

Practical notes

Keep the file small. A banner is attached to every message sent while the window is open, so a 500KB image is a real cost at organisational volume.

Set an explicit pixel width on the image, and design it to sit comfortably at the width of a signature rather than at the full width of an email client.

Set meaningful alt text. Some recipients will see only that, and the campaign name it falls back to was written for your banner list rather than for them.

Test it before the window opens by setting a short window now, sending a test email, and then setting the real window.

Overlapping windows

A signature carries at most one banner. Two campaigns cannot stack on the same message.

When more than one window is open, the one that started most recently wins. A new campaign therefore takes over from a running one for as long as it lasts, and the older banner reappears if its own window is still open when the newer one closes.

That is a deliberate behaviour rather than a tie-break to rely on. Overlapping windows still make it harder to say what any given person received on any given day, which matters when somebody asks later.

Ending a campaign

Do nothing. The window closes and the banner disappears from every signature at once.

If you need it gone sooner, edit the end of the window to a time in the past, or delete the banner. Both take effect immediately.