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Dynamic rules and personalisation for subject lines and from names

Use personalisation and dynamic rules to customise your subject line or from name for different contacts.

Written by Gareth Burroughes

In the same way that you can use personalisation and dynamic content in your email content, you can also use these tools for subject lines and from names.

  • Personalisation — inserts data stored against your contacts, for example, FIRSTNAME or ACCOUNT_MANAGER.

  • Dynamic rules — are logical rules used to determine what should display, for example:

    If the contact's country is United Kingdom show New t-shirt colours released, otherwise show New t-shirt colors released.

    This means you can send one campaign with multiple targeted messages for different groups of customers. Which message each group receives depends on the rules you set.


Personalise your subject line and from name

When creating your subject line and friendly from name, you can insert a placeholder for a contact data field.

To do this:

  1. Select the personalisation icon next to the Subject line or Friendly from name field.

    This shows a list of all of your contact data fields.

  2. Select the contact data field you want to use.

A placeholder, for example, @FIRSTNAME@, is added to the subject line or from name. When the campaign is sent, the value stored against each contact for that data field is populated.


Dynamic rules for subject lines and from names

Dynamic content consists of three main elements:

  • Default content
    This is the default subject line, or default from name, that your contacts see if none of the rules that you set apply to them.

  • Variations
    These are the alternative versions of the subject line or from name that you want contacts to see who meet specific criteria set in your rules.

  • Rules
    These are the criteria you set to determine whether contacts see the default content, or a variation. For example, these rules could be GENDER must be equal to "Male", or AGE greater than 65.

Set up dynamic rules

  1. On the Campaign details page, select CAMPAIGN SETTINGS.

  2. For Dynamic content, select Subject line. If you also want to enable a dynamic from name, select From name.
    It’s not possible to only enable a dynamic from name. If you want to do this, enable both, but enter the same subject line for all variations.

  3. Select APPLY.

Create variations

You see the dynamic content window surrounding your subject line and from name. It shows the Default variation. First, enter the content you want to use as default.

Then, to add your variations:

  1. Expand the Variations drop-down menu and select New variation.

  2. In the popup, enter a variation name to identify this particular variation.

  3. Select select another contact data field, select the data field you want to use in your rule.

  4. Expand the drop-down menu and select the operator you want to use.
    Different data types have different available operators.

  5. Where required, enter a value to segment on in the input field to complete your rule.

  6. Select OKAY.

  7. To add another rule to the variation, repeat steps 4—7.

    Between each rule is the AND/OR toggle. And indicates that all rules created must be true for a contact to see your variation. You can toggle to Or, which indicates that at least one of your rules needs to be true for a contact to see the variation.

  8. When you’re happy with the variation rules, select APPLY.

  9. Repeat these steps to add as many variations as you need.


Available operators

For text type contact data fields, you can set rules for:

  • Equal to

  • Not equal to

  • Contains

  • Does not contain

  • Starts with

  • Ends with

  • Is empty

  • Does not begin with

  • Does not end with

  • Is not empty

For date type contact data fields, you can set rules for:

  • On

  • Before

  • After

  • Is empty

  • Is not empty

For number based contact data fields, you can set rules for:

  • Equal to

  • Not equal to

  • More than

  • Less than

  • At least (that is greater than or equal to)

  • At most (that is less than or equal to)

  • Is empty

  • Is not empty

For Boolean (yes/no) contact data fields, you can set rules based on the answer being yes (true) or no (false).


You can see what variation is currently being displayed by its name to the right of Variations.

To switch between variations, expand the Variations drop-down menu and select a variation from the dropdown. Enter the subject line and from name, if applicable, that you want to display to contacts who match the applied rules.

Using the Variations drop-down menu you can also:

  • Add another variation

  • Edit the rules for a variation: select the Edit (pencil) icon

  • Duplicate the variation: select the Copy (pages) icon

  • Remove the variation: select the Remove (cross) icon

  • Rearrange the order of the rules by dragging the variation names up or down.
    The default variation is always the last one in the list.


Dynamic rules and other features

If your campaign is set up for split testing, each split version needs to have dynamic rules set up as required.

If your campaign is set up to use ReMail, the same dynamic subject lines will be used in the ReMail. You won't get the option to edit the subject line of the Remail the way you can when using a static subject line. If you want to be able to change the subject line of the ReMail, you must ensure you're using a static subject line.

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