Dynamic Content

Why use Dynamic Content

Dynamic content takes personalisation several steps further than simply including someone’s name in the email – whole areas of the message can be different for each recipient. The content contains regions that draw in different text/images depending on customer preference and past activity.

This targeted content could take the form of personalized articles, images, product promotions or calls to action; based on the recipient’s demographic, preferences, purchase history or online activity.

For the purpose of this document, we’ll use the example of music preference with the field Music_pref, having given the user specific choice such as pop, rock, dance, etc.

Using dynamic content can help to improve click-through rates and ROI. It also reduces the time spent creating numerous campaigns to different groups of recipients. It will help to minimize opt-outs, as your recipients have faith that your emails are, and will remain, relevant to them.

Upload your list

To do this:

1. Create your list with a custom field containing data for each customer. For example, you might have a column for music preferences, populated with Rock/Pop/Folk as needed.
2. Log in and go to contacts, then new contact list.
3. Add a list name, choose the relevant upload option and select or upload your list data. Click next.
4. First select the person’s email address from the top drop-down. Now go to custom fields, where the right-hand column select matching sample column will show each piece of data from a random entry on your list. Choose one of these.
5. Match this up with a custom field name, either from the left-hand column existing column name if you’ve used this custom field before, or by entering a new one in alternative column name.  Click next.
6. Enter the email address where you’d like to be sent the notification that the list has uploaded, and check over the summary. Click finish.
7. Your list upload will need to be completed before you can use the custom fields in your email content.

Create a content block for each preference

Go to content, then dynamic content, and click the new content item button.

Give the content block a name – this must be a word that appears in the relevant field in the contact list, e.g. Pop.

Add your HTML and plain text version (you can use the visual editor to create the HTML, then copy and paste it in). Click save, and your content block will appear in the list in the Dynamic Content screen.

Repeat for each block of content you need for the message.

Create your dynamic regions

Create a new message. In the message content tab, go to dynamic content, and then select edit dynamic regions.

Click Create new region. The name of the region can be anything, but the word entered in look in list field has to exactly match the custom field name as specified when you uploaded your list (case sensitive). Note that you will need a different region for each field you wish to use for dynamic content.

If you want a header or footer for the region, add this next. You can also add a divider, which will be used when the recipient has more than one preference. Click save, go back to the editor and click save to save the message. Insert the region in the message in the format {~region~xyz~}, where ‘xyz’ sis your region name. For example, where the region name is Music, the code will be {~region~Music~}.

Schedule your campaign

We recommend testing to a seed list, with at least one contact set up to receive each of the dynamic content fields. Once you’re satisfied that all the available content blocks and combinations will render correctly, just schedule the campaign as normal.