Local AutoPilot’s email marketing platform allows you to create campaigns and send them to your entire contact list. Normally, you would just send a generic message that looks the same for every single contact you send the campaign to.
However, your campaigns do not have to be just static messages. They can actually be more dynamic and more personalized. You can completely customize the message content for each contact. You can do this through personalization.
CAUTIONS AND CAVEATS
Test messages: Not all personalization tags will work when sending a test message. To test all tags, send a campaign to a test list (with your email included) and then you can see the output.
Cursor position: To make sure your personalization tag selection is positioned where you want it, first click into the message editor text area, and position the cursor exactly where you want the personalization tag to appear.
How to Use Personalization Tags
On the Message Editor (Design Stage of Campaign Creation), start editing any text area, then click the “Personalize” button on the right.
This will open a modal/pop-up in the center of the screen.
Here you can choose what information you want to include in the message. Below is a list of all the personalization options you have available on each tab.
- Contacts – Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Full Name, All your Custom Fields, GEOFields, & Social Data
- Message – Unsubscribe Link, Web Copy, Web Copy (No Social Links), Update Subscription Account Link, Send to Friend Link, Unsubscribe Link (All Lists), Today’s Date, Today’s Date +/- X day(s), Contact’s IP Address, Contact’s List, Contact ID
- Social – Social Submit Links, Facebook Like Button, Share on Facebook Link, Share on Twitter Link, Share on Google+ Link, Share on Reddit Link, Share on Digg Link, Share on del.icio.us Link, Share on StumbleUpon Link
- Apps – External services we integrate with, such as SurveyMonkey or DropBox
There are also other Personalization Tags available to you. They are listed, with examples, at the end of the article.
Example Use of a Personalization Tag
One of the best use of personalization tags is to customize/personalize your message for your contacts. One great way of doing this is by addressing your contacts by his or her first name.
To do this, place your cursor at the location where you want the tag to go (you can even put it on the subject line). Then, click the Personalize button and choose the First Name tag on the Contacts tab.
Below you’ll see that we added the First Name tag in the body of the email.
After sending the campaign, in place of this tag will appear the contacts first name. You can include personalization tags anywhere in your message body which will be converted to their actual value when the campaign sends.
Below is an example message after the campaign was sent. You will see that the Tags was replaced by the actual name value of the First Name field for that contact.
Modifying Personalization Tags
ActiveCampaign includes a number of options to modify the text in personalization tags, in order to change lowercase letters in to uppercase letters, or vice versa. To modify a personalization tag, simply add the personalization tag as normal, then edit it to include a “|” symbol (also known as the “pipe” symbol), followed by your modification text. The modification options we offer are:
- UPPER (converts entire tag to all uppercase letters)
- UPPERFIRST (converts first letter to uppercase)
- UPPERWORDS (capitalizes the first letter of every word)
- TITLECASE (capitalizes the first letter of every word, and forces all other letters to be lowercase)
- LOWER (converts entire tag to lowercase letters)
- LOWERFIRST (changes the first letter of the text to lowercase)
- LOWERWORDS (changes the first letter of every word to lowercase)
For example, let us say that you have some contacts who have typed in their names entirely in lower case letters when they subscribed. If you include the tag %FIRSTNAME% in your message, and you want to make sure the first letter of the first name is always capitalized, you can change the tag to look like this:
%FIRSTNAME|UPPERFIRST%
Note that the text “|UPPERFIRST” was added before the % sign. This would change the name “jane” into “Jane”, for example.
You may also wish to include the contact’s full name by using the %FULLNAME% tag, and you may want to make sure that the first letter of the first name is capitalized, as well as the first letter of the last name. In that case, you can use the UPPERWORDS modifier like this:
%FULLNAME|UPPERWORDS%
This modification would change the full name “jane doe” into “Jane Doe”. These modifiers work on all custom fields as well as standard fields.
Below is a visual example of how each modifier would modify a given sentence:
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Personalization Tag Index
Here are all of the available personalization tags, and example values they would be converted to:
| Description | Personalization Tag | Example value |
|---|---|---|
| Email Address | %EMAIL% |
john@activecampaign.com |
| First Name | %FIRSTNAME% |
John |
| Last Name | %LASTNAME% |
Smith |
| Full Name | %FULLNAME% |
John Smith |
| Phone | %PHONE% |
555-666-7777 |
| Organization | %ORGANIZATION% |
ActiveCampaign |
| Date Subscribed | %SUBDATE% |
10/10/2011 |
| Time Subscribed | %SUBTIME% |
14:19:40 |
| Unsubscribe Link | %UNSUBSCRIBELINK% |
|
| Web Copy | %WEBCOPY% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Update Subscription Account Link | %UPDATELINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Send to Friend Link | %FORWARD2FRIEND% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Unsubscribe Link (All Lists) | %UNSUBSCRIBELINK%&ALL |
|
| Social Submit Links | %SOCIALSHARE% |
 See below for each individual link URL. |
| Facebook Like Button | %SOCIAL-FACEBOOK-LIKE% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Facebook Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Facebook Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-FACEBOOK-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Twitter Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-TWITTER% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Twitter Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-TWITTER-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Digg Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-DIGG% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Digg Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-DIGG-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Reddit Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-REDDIT% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Reddit Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-REDDIT-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on del.icio.us Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-DELICIOUS% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on del.icio.us Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-DELICIOUS-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Google+ Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on Google+ Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-GPLUS-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on StumbleUpon Link/Icon | %SOCIALSHARE-STUMBLEUPON% |
 With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Share on StumbleUpon Link Only | %SOCIALSHARE-STUMBLEUPON-LINK% |
With link tracking on: With link tracking off: |
| Today’s Date (assuming today is Oct. 24, 2011) | %TODAY% |
10/24/2011 |
| Today’s Date + 1 | %TODAY+1% |
10/25/2011 |
| Today’s Date – 1 | %TODAY-1% |
10/23/2011 |
| List Sender Info | %SENDER-INFO% |
My Email Marketing Company 123 S. Main St, Chicago, IL 60405 United States |
| List Sender Info (single line) | %SENDER-INFO-SINGLELINE% |
My Email Marketing Company, 123 S. Main St, Chicago, IL 60405, United States |
| Sender List Reminder | %SENDER-LIST-REMINDER% |
You were added to this list when you purchased from our company. |
| Contact’s IP Address | %CONTACTIP% |
90.434.22.189 |
| Contact’s List | %LISTNAME% |
General List |
| Contact ID | %CONTACTID% |
23 |
| Campaign ID | %CAMPAIGNID% |
14 |
| Message ID | %MESSAGEID% |
26 |