Basic Dynamic Content in Campaign Enterprise 12

Dynamic content is one of the key features of Campaign Enterprise. Pulling information out of, and putting information into your database helps you target your email marketing in order to make the most of your contact list. In prior versions of Campaign, dynamic content could get somewhat confusing. Campaign Enterprise version 12 allows for more functionality of the dynamic content features.

Built-In Merge Field

The built-in merge field is similar to that in the past, but adds % signs inside the curly braces { } that were used in the past. The number of percentage signs surrounding the field name differentiate the type of merge being used. Built-in merge fields are those that are provided by the Campaign system to be used in various places in your message, subject line, or write back strings. The basic construct is {%Unique_ID%}.

Examples:

{%UNSUBSCRIBE_URL%}

{%UNIQUE_ID%}

{%CAMPAIGN_NAME%}

{%CAMPAIGN_ID%}

{%VIEW_AS_WEBPAGE_URL%}

Basic Merge Field

The basic merge field, that pulls information from the database to which your campaign is connected, uses two percentage signs inside the curly braces. Using the basic merge field, you can personalize your message to each individual record in your list. For example, you can include the {%%FirstName%%} field in your subject line, or salutation line in the message body, it will pull that data from the table and insert it where the merge field is located. The basic construct for the basic merge is {%%FieldName%%}. Please note that the field name comes from your table, and will need to be changed and modified accordingly.

Merge Functions

The newest merge functions can also be considered message content programming. Using these functions you can modify the message, based on individual data stored in your table, as the message is generated. The delimiters for merge functions contain three percentage signs inside the curly braces. A basic example shows a replacement for a blank first name field, to a default value.

Dear {%%%=NZ(Firstname,"Valued Customer")%%%}. In this instance, if the Firstname field specified happens to be blank, the term Valued Customer will be used in its place.

There are a number of basic functions available, and great flexibility to modify and create more.

NZ <column name>,<defalut text>

FormatNumber <column name>,<format string>

FormatDateTime(<ColumnName> or SYSTEM_TIME,<FormatString>)

FormatCurrency(<ColumnName>)

Select(<ColumnName>,<MatchValue1>,<ReplaceValue1>,<MatchValue2>,<ReplaceValue2>,...)

If(<ColumnName>{conditional}<Constant>,<TrueValue>,<FalseValue>)

IncludeTextFromURL(<URL>)

IncludeTextFromFile(<FilePath>)

More information on the available string can be found in the Campaign Enterprise 12 documentation, starting at page 54.

Start making the most out of the information you collect, to create highly targeted and desirable emails that get responses.

If you have any questions on this subject please email us at sales@arialsoftware.com

Campaign Enterprise is a scaleable enterprise-level email distribution system that runs on your own in-house computers connecting directly to your database or CRM in real-time, and using your own mail server. Visit http://www.arialsoftware.com for more information.

The Art of Bounces

Though this has been written on before it is always good to review from time to time the subject of bounces. If you send any quantity of email, whether you use your own mail server or a service, the "quality" of your list is extremely important. If your list has a lot of bad emails then it you could be marked as a "bad" sender and lose reputation with the big-boy mail services.

THE PROBLEM: Returned emails do not have a standard format. Many initially believe that a "returned" email should be the whole email, which would be wonderful, but usually mail servers in the world either stripe down the email to almost nothing or just send back their own rendition. Overall, you can not rely on either the headers or the body of the bounced message to be able to reliably identify the original recipient, especially if you want to automate the process. Even if you add your own custom headers, it's likely that the bouncing server will strip them when it sends notification back to you.

The only piece of information that will remain intact in a bounce is the return-path email address because at a minimum the email will need to return to that email address. The only way to automate truly accurate bounce catching is to encode the recipient directly into the return path address itself. This would typically be done by overriding your server's default return path address for each outgoing message, using a unique value per recipient, like bounce-XXXXX@yourcompanydomain.com, where XXXXX is some encoded and/or obfuscated representation of the recipient's email address or some other internal identifier. This is VERPs, or Variable Envelope Return Path. Campaign Enterprise v12 uses VERPs to process bounced emails.

Be sure to check out the Campaign Enterprise Version 12 Documentation for more information on how bounce handling is done in Campaign Enterprise v12.

If you have any questions on this subject please email us at sales@arialsoftware.com

Campaign Enterprise is a scaleable enterprise-level email distribution system that runs on your own in-house computers connecting directly to your database or CRM in real-time, and using your own mail server. Visit http://www.arialsoftware.com for more information.

Pros of Using a Mail Server Service

The ability to sending email is based on the mail server and the “clean-ness” of your list and not so much our software. If you get a lot of bounces or you get a lot of complaints there is nothing to stop one of the blacklisting systems from blocking you out. It definitely takes daily attention to check blacklisting and respond to ISPs that are having problem with email. One of the pluses with using an emailing service instead of your own mail server is they do the blacklisting work for you because they need to keep their reputation too. The one we like is mailgun.net which as of the time of writing this article gives you 10,000 FREE emails per month and then the cost of more is very reasonable for higher numbers. In my experience, companies burn a lot more time/money that then realize dealing with just one problem a month.

If you have any questions on this subject please email us at sales@arialsoftware.com

Campaign Enterprise is a scaleable enterprise-level email distribution system that runs on your own in-house computers connecting directly to your database or CRM in real-time, and using your own mail server. Visit http://www.arialsoftware.com for more information.