Using Anchor Tags & Anchor Links

Every VerticalResponse for AppExchange newsletter includes an "Also In This Issue" Table of Contents right at the top to help all our readers find content that interests them.  Have you ever wondered how you can create your own TOC?  Well, wonder no more!

You can very easily create a TOC for an email created within VerticalResponse through the use of Anchor Tags and Anchor Links.  Anchor Tags allow the creation of a link in one section of an email that links to another section of that same email - just like in the "Also In This Issue" part of our own newsletter.

To create an Anchor Link in an email of your own, you should start by placing an Anchor Tag within a section of the email to which you intend to link.  The title or first sentence of the section is the best place to insert the Anchor Tag.  Note that you must be using our Canvas Editor for this to work as we do not provide a method for creating Anchors within our Wizard tool.  Here’s how to insert a tag:

1. Left-click the exact spot where you want to place the Tag. 
2. Click the Anchor Icon found in the top row of the Canvas toolbar.
3. This opens an “Insert/Edit Anchor” dialog box.  Enter a name for your anchor here.  The Anchor’s name should be no longer than one word, otherwise the link you create may not work properly for some recipients.
4. Click Insert. 

Now that the Anchor Tag is in place, you can create a link that points to that Anchor.  To do so you should:

1. Select text or an image that you want to use for the link.
2. Click the chain link icon in top row of the Canvas toolbar.
3. This will open the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box.  Use the Anchors drop-down menu to select the name of the Anchor Tag you created earlier.
4. Click Update.  You have now created a link that points to the section of the email in which you placed your Anchor Tag. 

To test that the Anchor Link works properly, go to the Quick Preview section of the Canvas editor or send yourself a test version of the email.  And to create more Anchor Links, just repeat the steps above.  There is no limit on the number of these links that you can include in an individual email.

Including a small Table of Contents at the top of a long email or an email that includes several different topics (as with a Newsletter) can be a great way to get more people engaged with your message.  A TOC allows recipients to find items that interest them without needing to scroll through the entire email message.  And, of course, the easier you make it for your subscribers to find content that interests them, the more likely they’ll be to take action with your message.  

To learn more about both creating regular Links and Anchor Links using our Canvas Editor, watch the video below:

Comments

[Richard Huffaker]

Hi Elizabeth,

Do you remember if any of your anchors had names that were longer than one word long?

Also, presuming you came to this post via the newsletter we sent out today and that you received this newsletter in Outlook 2007 - what happens when you click the Anchor Links in our newsletter?

[Elizabeth]

Do anchors work within Outlook?

For our first newsletter, we created a table of contents using anchors. It worked perfectly in my test and in the "view in a browser" version, but the links to the anchors appeared inactive in the Outlook version.

When I called to ask support about it, I got the impression it was a common problem.