Instagram setup

Using a Litmus Personalize Instagram Tag, you can automatically pull your latest Instagram posts into your email. The UI offers a variety of attractive templates for you to use or you can design custom templates via Content Automation.

Embed social Tags into your lifecycle email to keep email content up-to-date and fresh each time the email is opened. Using a Tag means that your email will always display the latest posts automatically so you can reduce the amount of time and resources it takes to pause and update the content in your lifecycle campaigns. Add Tags to your welcome program, transactional, and sales recovery emails!

Here are some examples of including a live Instagram in emails:

To get started, you must first connect your Instagram in the Litmus Personalize platform.

Connect your Instagram account

To create a custom Instagram template, the Instagram account must be added as an API content source in your account. The first step is to authenticate your account. 

Go to Settings in the dropdown at the top right under your account name. Select the Instagram Accounts tab and then the + Add Account button.

If you're not already logged into an Instagram account, you'll be taken to an Instagram login page. Once you've logged in to the Instagram account you want to connect, follow the prompts to allow the connection. You will then be re-directed to the Litmus Personalize Home page. If you go back to your Instagram Account Settings, you'll see your Instagram account listed.

You are now ready to set up your template!

Create an Instagram template

In your account, navigate to Templates and then select Content Automation from the left sidebar. You can create a new template by selecting + New Template.

Add a name in the Lorem ipsum dolor field at the top left. Go ahead and check the High resolution checkbox for a crisp final preview.

Next, select the Connect content source button to connect your template to your feed. You should have already added at least one Instagram account in your account Settings. If you haven't done that yet, complete that step before continuing on with your template.

After selecting the Connect content source button, you'll see your library of options. The Instagram content source will be a JSON feed so if you have many content sources you can filter based on feed type or use the search bar. Select the Done button after you've picked the one you want.

You are now ready to begin designing your template. First, select the canvas and use the Inspector tab in the right sidebar to adjust the size and background color of your canvas. You can also upload a background image.

Then, use the + Add Block button on the left to add your content blocks. Next, select the blue link connect tool to the right of the text box to connect a source for the block element.

Select the Content source radio button, then open each of the source tab triangles to expand the content options. Select media_url if you want to display Instagram images only. KD_Image_or_VideoThumbnail will display images, as well as videos and reels.

Instagram images

Instagram now accommodates images of varying sizes, which means that images can look skewed in the image block. To accommodate this, apply an auto-crop condition to the image block. This creates an auto-crop from the center of the image to ensure each image looks the same.

Click on the image and select the crop icon, then the Auto square crop option in the modal and select Done.

Once you have built out your template, it is possible to duplicate your work to create the impact of tiles. To do this, go to the Configuration tab in the right sidebar. Under Template Properties, change the Type to Repeated in the dropdown. By changing the Repeat Count, you can choose how many images will be displayed within the one template.

When you then preview your template, you will have the view of the duplicated template.

When videos or reels are posted on Instagram, the first frame from the video is used as the thumbnail in our tag, which might be blank or just different from the thumbnail that shows on your Instagram profile. You have the option to exclude videos when you set up your campaign.

Create an Instagram Tag

Navigate to the campaigns section in the platform, here you can either create the tag within an existing campaign or create a new one.

Navigate to 'create a new tag' and select the content automation icon.

Enter a description for your tag and select the template you wish to use and click next.

Next, complete the href field.

There is the option to filter your Instagram images based on certain criteria.

This is a great way to filter data based on a caption with a specific hashtag or to exclude certain influencer content. You can also filter by media type to exclude videos.

The Instagram API contains the 20 most recent images from the connected Instagram account. If you add filtering to your tags and these can't be met to fulfill the whole template you will see the default - this will be the most recent images in the API feed irrespective of any filters applied.

Once you have added any filters you would like select 'next' and the tag will be generated.

Using the tag as generated will show Instagram images beginning with the first in the feed. If you have a single image template or a row of images and wish to change the position of the tag, you can command the position by adding 'pos_(num)' as below:

Please note, the Instagram security token does expire and needs re-authenticating from time to time. If you see this warning, please reconnect your Instagram account.

Remove a connected Instagram account

If you need an Instagram account removed, you can do so in your account settings.

1. Navigate to the Instagram Accounts section under Account Settings
2. Click the small trash can icon below the account you want to delete
3. Confirm the delete dialog