‘HELLO {FIRSTNAME}’: A HOW-TO ON PERSONALIZATION IN ADOBE CAMPAIGN

In Adobe Campaign there are two main ways to personalize an email based on the data. And it all boils down to where the personalized data is coming from.

Firstly, Adobe Campaign (and most ESP’s these days) will allow you bring in the recipient’s (the person) first name, last name, or anything that they have previously given you through a form, and bring that data into the email itself. In this case, it is data from the recipient table. The code for the first name is <%= recipient.firstName %>. Expanding beyond firstName this personalization code will work for any field that is currently on the recipient table <%= recipient.fieldInTable %>.

One nice thing about Adobe Campaign is if that field firstName is empty it won’t show anything. From time to time you will see the place holder text ‘Hi, {firstName}’ that actually doesn't do anything. Usually to identify where personalization should happen but missed by developer. Luckly in our case, if there is nothing there you would just get ‘Hi,’. Two main ways to add the personalization code, you can use the wizard in the delivery to add the code where you want it (shown below). Or you can just type it into place. If you do type it in, it is best to type the code in the HTML source. Sometimes typing the code directly in the WYSIWYG will get you odd CSS results.

Moving beyond the recipient table...

The goal of this next step is to utilize target extension. Target Extension is what is sounds like. It is an extension of the data of your target. So instead of looking at data on the recipient table, you are looking at the extended data in the list. In this case, a CSV file is exported from the source system with the additional data fields native to that source. Then that file is imported directly into a “List” in Adobe Campaign.

In the image below shows the columns and fields that were stored in the source system that I want to use either in the email for personalization or you can also use these fields to query off of in the workflow.

Now as the workflow is being built out it starts with the List. Then use an enrichment to connect the emails from the List to the recipient table, using email as your KEY. (You can’t send an email to people on a List, you need to link them to the recipient table.) Here are 4 images on how to configure the enrichment to join the list to recipient table. It is important that the emails are created as recipients because the enrichment takes the email in the List and finds the matching email address on the recipient table. The email address is the key that connects the list to the recipient table.

Now once the workflow is built the data in the List in now available for you to utilize in the email. The code for this is <%= targetData.columnHeader %>. The biggest value-add here is that you can use other source systems data in Adobe Campaign without actually having to extend the out-of-the-box Adobe Campaign schema.

Here you can now see the delivery is linked to the List via the Target extension. And the really cool part is that each field in that column is unique to the person receiving the email. In this example, I am bringing in Days till the event, for multiple events at different times and locations, which will be different for each person on my list!

So our targetData is now preloaded data that is available for the workflow to play with that is not on the obvious tables (recipient, message, ect.). But the key, in this case, is that any additional columns you have in a CSV file from another source system can be utilized in your email using targetData.

Header photo by Robin van der Ploeg