Update images AFTER sending?

[ConorIrvine]

Hey all,

Hoping someone in this wicked community knows something I don't 🤞

I have an email that populates images via connected content (API call). The email has already gone out to users but we'd like to replace the image with another one. 

As this is an API served image and not within the Braze Media Library does anyone know of a means to update this? Would the fact that this is an image hosted outside of braze allow it to bypass the global CDN? And providing this is possible is it viable to force a recache for google/apple and their proxy loading mechanic?

Thanks in advance

[hardik_choubey]

Hey Dear Conorlrvine,
I faced the same when a very Important promotion's content and image were not populated due to last-minute changes in MIS.

Unfortunately, This won't be possible.
Dynamic content like Images, Text, etc. populates by API and creates Email in real-time while sending.
If it is sent, It will not replaceable at ESP like Google, Yahoo, etc.

[ConorIrvine · Accepted solution]

Hey all just wanted to share the solution we used in case this is of use for anyone.

Because the image was passed to Braze by API and the image was hosted on our server, we were able to replace the image hosted by us (making sure to keep the name/url exactly the same) this meant that when it was fetched by an inbox it would load the updated imagery.

This isn't fool proof as some inboxes will cache (meaning a user could theoretically clear their cache and then see the new one) or proxy loaded which prevents the image changing. BUT if you're in a pickle then changing for some is still better than none.
Hope that helps someone else if they ever get stuck 🙂 

[DanyWillis]

Hey Conor, that's really interesting to hear thanks. We faced a similar issue a while back whilst using connected content and we suffered a similar problem with caching, would even cause some blank emails to go out which wasn't fun. Thanks for the update!