Branding Capabilities in the Audience Segmentation Content Engine Email Designer

MayaP

Has anyone had success customizing the CSS within the CMC Toolkits Audience Segmentation Content Engine to better match their brand guidelines? I’m especially interested in adjusting things like font styles, spacing, and section highlights before pushing the content into our email builder. Are there any limitations to what can be styled directly in the toolkit, or tips for clean overrides?

JeffBz

Yes, I’ve had some success customizing the CSS in the CMC Toolkits Audience Segmentation Content Engine to align more closely with our brand guidelines. Here’s what I’ve learned:

✅ What Can Be Customized:

• Font families, sizes, and weights: You can override these by targeting standard tags like p, h1–h3, and a using inline styles or scoped <style> blocks if your platform supports them.
• Spacing and padding: Use classes or direct element styling to adjust section spacing (margin/padding) for a cleaner, more consistent layout.
• Buttons and CTAs: These are easily adjustable with CSS. You can restyle them with custom colors, border radius, and hover states to match your primary brand color palette.
• Section highlights or dividers: You can add background colors or border accents to section containers to help differentiate content types or audience segments.

⚠️ Limitations to Watch For:

• Email client rendering: If you’re pushing the HTML into email platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, remember that many email clients don’t support modern CSS (like Flexbox or external stylesheets). Inline styles are your safest bet.
• Toolkit restrictions: Some dynamic content elements may be regenerated with each export, which can overwrite or ignore external class-based styling. For this reason, inline styles are the most reliable way to ensure consistency.
• Preview mismatch: Occasionally, what looks good in the toolkit preview won’t match your email builder’s rendering, so always test in Litmus or Email on Acid to be sure.

💡 Pro Tips:

• Create a brand-ready style guide snippet you can quickly drop into exported HTML for consistency.
• Use media queries sparingly—many email clients don’t support them fully.
• If your email platform supports it, consider building a custom email module/template that pulls the toolkit’s content into a branded wrapper automatically.

Happy to share some starter CSS or a template if that’s helpful!