Dynamic content gives you the ability to dynamically insert content for recipients based on their preferences and profiles. By specifying rules for when different content sections should appear, you can give the most relevant offers to each of your customers. Dynamic content can also reduce both the number of audiences and the number of documents needed to test numerous messages. Thus, with dynamic content you can test more personalized, relevant offers to your audience in less time.
To insert dynamic content into an email document:
1. In the Email Document Designer, insert curly braces ({}) at the point in the body of your email document where you want the dynamic content to appear.
2. Click the Merge button.
The Merge Content page appears.
3. Click Dynamic Content in the Select Content to Merge section.
4. Enter a name and description for the dynamic content.
The Name uniquely identifies the dynamic content object within the dialog. When you create a dynamic content object from an existing profile or document element, that element’s name is pre-filled in this field.
The Description is optional and can contain up to 254 characters.
Note: You cannot use quotation marks or periods in dynamic content.
5. Enter the Sections information.
6. Enter the Layout information.
7. Enter the Advanced information.
Dynamic Content Sections Information
The Sections part of the Dynamic Content builder is where you define your dynamic content object’s content sections, conditions, and content. You can add sections one by one using the Add Section button, or you can create a group of sections based on a profile or document choice field using the Load button.
Note: Loading a large group of sections will slow down the load action. Therefore, the Profile and Document field picker is restricted to only show choices with a choice value of less than 60.
Note: The order in which the content sections appear in this list is their ranking for the purposes of determining which content sections will be displayed when the number to be displayed is limited, as set in the Number of Sections to Display text box. You can use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to move the content sections around in the list.
Image: Dynamic Content Sections section
This example illustrates the fields and controls on the Dynamic Content Sections section.
Section Name Provide a section name that is unique within the Dynamic Content.
Selection Criteria The left side of the expression can be any profile or document element with the exception of a many rows per contact profile.
The appropriate set of operators will be displayed for the element type. The right side of the expression can contain valid values (chosen from a list or typed in as text) corresponding to the element on the left side.
You can use the And, Or and With functions to create more complex conditions.
Note: If you select With function to create a criterion, the fields of the selected profile alone are available for selection.
However, if you select And or Or functions, you can use fields from any profile to form the criterion.
Content The Content text area lets you enter text associated with the content section. You can enter text or raw HTML content. If, for example, this content is part of an HTML email, you can also specify an image for the content (for example, <IMG SRC=image_location>). You can include other merge content objects in the text by embedding them using the Merge button.
You also have the option of pointing to external content that might reside in a content management system, at a URL, or in an external file system. Refer to the Extensions documentation, particularly the section on sample servlets where an example is given how to do this. After the extension is developed and registered, the extension syntax can be entered in this tab.
Backup Text The backup text is optional—you can enter text to be displayed if problems are encountered evaluating conditions for the content section.
See Understanding Extensions.
Dynamic Content Layout Information
The Layout section lets you specify the content headers, footers, and content section separators. Each text area accepts either text or HTML (typically, the HTML is used to specify a path to a GIF or JPG location).
The buttons to the left of the text areas show the location of the separators when the document is rendered.
Image: Dynamic Content Layout section
This example illustrates the fields and controls on the Dynamic Content Layout section.
Content Header The contents of this text area are displayed immediately preceding the rendered dynamic content.
Content Footer The contents of this text area are displayed immediately following the rendered dynamic content.
Per Section Header The contents of this text area are displayed before each content section.
Note: Care should be taken when specifying this header in conjunction with the Section Footer.
Per Section Footer The contents of this text area are displayed after each content section.
Note: Care should be taken when specifying this header in conjunction with the Section Header.
Section Separator The contents of this text area are displayed to separate sections of content.
The most common use for the various separators is to provide a visual division when displaying blocks of content. Content Headers are most effective to call out a topic in a page, while the Section separators are useful for providing separation between similar types of content. In a typical situation you would likely not use both a Section Header and Section Footer in the same document.
Note: Because no validation is performed to verify that the text you enter is valid for the type of document in which the dynamic content object is embedded, you should take care to specify a separator format that can be rendered correctly for the document type.
Dynamic Content Advanced Options Information
The Advanced Options section contains features designed for more advanced implementations of dynamic content sections. These features are administrative and regulate the runtime behavior of
retrieving and displaying dynamic content. Typical users should not need to modify these settings unless they want to override runtime defaults or provide special processing.
Image: Dynamic Content Advanced Options section
This example illustrates the fields and controls on the Dynamic Content Advanced Options section.
Track Content Sections When selected, this setting turns on tracking for content sections sent in email messages. Each time a particular content section is sent in the email, the count is incremented (for example, if a
particular content section is included 3 times in a single email, this counts as 3).
Backup Text for follow-up e-mails This text area is for specifying optional text to be displayed in follow-up emails in situations where the dynamic content object encounters an error when obtaining content, or if the timeout is exceeded. Only text or raw HTML is permitted in this field—
you cannot embed another dynamic content object or extension in it. The field is limited to a maximum of 2000 characters.
This field can only be used for follow-up emails—for broadcast email jobs, it is better to halt the job when a timeout occurs, identify the problem (for example, bring the network back up if it has gone down) and then pick up where you left off and send the remainder of the job with the correct content. If a timeout is reached or an error occurs in a broadcast email job, the job will go into a state of Failed. The problem should be investigated and the job restarted.