You can improve your SMS and MMS campaigns by including personalisation markers which can contain data fields and Liquid markup. You can use this to add personal information relating to each contact that receives your campaigns, making them more personalised and improving engagement.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
If you use Dotdigital for both Email and SMS, you need to:
Make sure you have merged your Email and SMS contacts. Learn more in Merging contacts.
Make sure you are storing your contacts’ mobile numbers in the mobile number field, rather than in a custom data field. Learn more in Transfer mobile numbers from a custom data field to the Mobile number field.
Make sure link shortening is turned on in your SMS/MMS campaign options when using personalised links.
We support an extensive subset of the Liquid markup language. However, not all elements are supported.
You must have Advanced personalisation enabled on your account.
Learn more about Liquid markup in Liquid personalisation: overview.
We currently do not support the use of dynamic images through Liquid markup in MMS.
Character count and SMS segment count
Data fields and Liquid markup inside personalisation markers are not accounted for in the character count and SMS segment count that displays below the SMS message text box. When your SMS message is sent, the output of the personalisation is added on top of the character count below the SMS message text box. The length of this output can vary depending on the contact.
Also, personalisation markers may output results that contain Unicode characters, for example, names with Latin characters. This can create additional SMS segments and might increase the cost of your SMS campaign send.
Learn more in Why personalisation might increase SMS cost and SMS message length and Unicode.
Add data fields to your campaign
You can add data fields to your SMS campaign to help personalise them for your contacts:
Learn more about data fields in Create, delete, and edit custom data fields.
Create a new SMS campaign or edit an existing one.
Learn how in SMS Campaigns.
Select Personalize at the bottom of the Message box.
From the Insert personalization side panel, select Data fields.
Expand the Data field drop-down menu and choose a data field.
Select APPLY.
To edit your data field, select the personalisation marker inside the Message box that contains your data field.
Add Liquid markup to your campaign
You can add Liquid markup to your SMS or MMS campaign:
Learn more about Liquid markup in Liquid personalisation: overview.
Create a new SMS or MMS campaign or edit an existing one.
Learn how in SMS Campaigns and Create and send MMS campaigns.
Select Personalize at the bottom of the Message box.
From the Insert personalization side panel, select Liquid markup.
Enter your Liquid markup in the Liquid markup text box.
Select APPLY.
To edit your Liquid markup, select the personalisation marker inside the Message box that contains your Liquid markup.
Line breaks in Liquid markup
Unlike using Liquid markup in EasyEditor, where line breaks are not reflected in your emails, surveys, pages, and forms, each new line of Liquid markup prints a new line in your SMS and MMS message, even if the Liquid markup doesn’t output any text.
To remove any unwanted line breaks of white space, you can use hyphens in your Liquid markup. We advise you use the preview as feature to double check that your Liquid markup has formatted correctly.
Preview as a contact
If you want to check your personalisation markers are working the way you want, you can preview your message as one of your contacts. To do this:
Above your message preview on the right of the page, select the PREVIEW AS search field.
Enter your contact’s email address, or mobile number to search for them.
Select your contact.
If you want to select a different contact, select the X icon next to the contact’s name and search again.
This now displays your message in the exact way your contact will see it.
When you don’t select a contact, the preview uses your user profile contact as default.
Learn more in Manage your user profile.