Personalization

What Is Personalization

Personalization is content that is specific to an individual customer or client.

You can create personalized content using several methods:

• Personalization Strings (also known as substitution strings or merge fields): You can insert any of the attributes in your account (such as subscriber name) into your emails by using personalization strings. Personalization strings can appear in the subject line of the email or in the email's content areas. Personalization strings display the attribute's value once the email is in the subscribers' inbox. See the Scenario section for more information.

• Dynamic content: This feature allows you to send customized content (text and images) to your subscribers based on the attributes defined in your account, such as purchase history, income, or demographics. You create a series of rules that determine which piece of content appears in which subscribers' emails.

• AMPscript: You can insert this scripting language into your email. The system processes the script at the point where you include it in the message to render content on a subscriber-by-subscriber basis. 

Why Use Personalization

Use Personalization to target your audience and make content specific to their needs.

Scenario

Northern Trail Outfitters creates a newsletter that they want to send to 1,000 people. In order for the newsletter to appear personal, Northern Trail Outfitters adds a personalization string in the subject line. 

Instead of saying, "Seasons Greetings, Customer" they insert a personalization string: "Seasons Greetings, %%FirstName%%".

When they send the email, each customer's first name appears in the %%FirstName%% slot as assigned in the attributes field on the subscriber list. Each customer sees their name in the subject line.

This simple example illustrates how you can use personalization strings to target customers; however, dynamic content and AMPscript provide much more customization.