Creating Dynamic Content
Dynamic content - What is it? Why do I care?
Campaigns that include content personalized to each subscriber are shown to have a higher engagement level with their audience. Merging dynamic content into a custom code email campaign, which you can import through our API, is a 3-step process.
| Step One: | Decide what dynamic content you want to appear in the email campaign. |
| Step Two: | Add the dynamic content to all intended campaign recipients. |
| Step Three: |
Put the dynamic content variables into the campaign. |
If you're logging into your account and using our normal email editor, as opposed to using custom code, use the "Contact Details" section to the left of blocks while editing them to merge dynamic content into the campaign. The guide linked here explains how to create custom links using our online editor. DO NOT follow the instructions here when using one of our online templates; they work differently.
What we're building
To demonstrate the techniques explained here, we'll create a simple email campaign that announces what dance class a contact attended, and what other class they might be interested in. There are five dynamic elements in this campaign:
- The contact's first name
- The class the contact attended
- The class they might be interested in taking
- The date of that new class
- A link containing the contact's email address
The HTML of the email campaign includes variables that are replaced by the values stored in each individual contact record at the time the email campaign is sent.
Step One: Contact properties and variables
Contact variables are the placeholders for the dynamic content that will appear in the campaign. Below are fields that are supported both when importing contacts through a file, and when using our API. We recommend choosing either the work OR home type of email address for all of your contacts for consistency.
| Contact Property | Variable Name in Email Campaign | Import File Column Name |
| Email address |
$SUBSCRIBER.EMAIL | Email Address - Work -or- Email Address - Home |
| First name | $SUBSCRIBER.FIRSTNAME | First name |
| Last name | $SUBSCRIBER.LASTNAME | Last name |
| Mailing address line 1 | $SUBSCRIBER.ADDRESSLINE1 | Address Line 1 |
| Mailing address line 2 | $SUBSCRIBER.ADDRESSLINE2 | Address Line 2 |
| Mailing address line 3 | $SUBSCRIBER.ADDRESSLINE3 | Address Line 3 |
| Mailing address city | $SUBSCRIBER.CITY | City |
| State name | $SUBSCRIBER.STATENAME | State |
| Postal (zip) code | $SUBSCRIBER.POSTALCODE | Zip/Postal Code |
| Home phone number | $SUBSCRIBER.HOMEPHONENUMBER | Phone number - Home |
| Job title | $SUBSCRIBER.JOBTITLE | Job Title |
| Custom Field n (n=1-15) | $SUBSCRIBER.CUSTOMTEXTn | Custom Field n |
Step Two: Contact Fields
Our standard contact fields are commonly used in emails, but many of our customers have very customized data they want to pull in that don't fit into the categories above. The Custom Field property allows you to store information about each contact that is unique to your needs or business. You can create custom fields ahead of time, or on the fly while you're adding or updating your contacts from a file. You can use either the bulk import multipart or JSON method to add large numbers of contacts.
Custom Field limits
- Max character limit - Custom Fields are limited to 50 characters in the API; use multiple custom fields to string together longer content.
- Max number of Custom Fields - Each contact is limited to 15 Custom Fields through the API.
- Custom Field names - The API supports very specific Custom Field names that must be in the format of "
Custom Field n", where n = 1 - 15 if imported through bulk methods, or CustomFieldn format if using our individual contact API endpoints.
You can see the JSON for a complete contact here. The custom field names in the file import column heading, contact record JSON through the API, and what is put into the campaign are ALL moderately different, where n=1-15. Our product UI allows you to have custom names for your custom fields, but to utilize custom fields through our API at any step, you must name your custom fields to be "Custom Field n" in the UI.
What's in the Contact Import File
| Email Address - Home | First name | Custom Field 1 | Custom Field 2 | Custom Field 3 |
| example@domain.com | Emma | Ballet | Belly Dance | Wednesday, September 12th |
Step Three: Putting Custom Content into the Campaign
In this example, the first name, email address, and three custom fields are going to be pulled in to render customized content to the recipient. This is the HTML that's either entered into the email_content field in the API, or pasted into the "Advanced Editor" portion of a custom code email campaign in our UI. In some accounts, you'll see this option to use your own custom code at the top of the email template selection page. In others, you can choose the "Want to use your own code?" option in the lower left side of the email template selector page.
You'll have 2 options to choose from there, HTML or XHTML. The HTML campaign content option will track links automatically so that you can see who clicked on what link. It is also less strict, and can be more easy to use. However, you must choose the XHTML option if you want to put custom content inside link URL's as shown below.
<html> |
See the JSON for a complete campaign object here.
Previewing and Sending the Campaign
While previewing a campaign or sending a test version of a campaign, you'll see the dollar-notation fields in the email. Contact-specific information is only sent during a LIVE, scheduled send of an email.
Be sure to test your email in a live send to a list containing just yourself when testing your campaign. After you see contact variables filled in properly, make sure all of your contacts have the data you're pulling into the campaign, and then make a copy of the campaign to send to all of your contacts.
Preview/Test
Live Send
