Shrishti Mishra

Building dynamic content is always challenging for me to engage different customers based on their persona. When I looked at the challenge that was presented I was able to correlate with me and my team how we are challenged in the same way. l looked at the approach which will be reliable and easy to handle for me and my marketing team without any coding knowledge and the approach was towards WYSIWYG. WYSIWYG is an acronym for "what you see is what you get". There are multiple ways to use WYSIWYG for building email content.

I talked about dynamic content in some of the line but what it is? What value it has? How I have used it? I will explain about it and will show how it was playing important role in my solution.

Dynamic Content

Dynamic content is content that displays in a content area according to the rules that you define based on the subscriber's attributes or the targeted data extension column values.

Example

A car rental firm wants to reengage with their existing customers .In this case reengaging with existing customer will be a challenge for marketing team because customer will be having different behaviour. Marketing team based on user behaviour (Like rental car duration or rental car model) can build different persona and assign particular content to user. Marketing team will create rule and assign particular content (Image/Email) to it and send for promotion. Dynamic content helps marketing team to engage/reengage with customers in personalize manner.

In this article I have focused on the approach which I have used to achieve dynamic content using WYSIWYG without HTML, AMPScript ,SQL query and CSS code. In this solution I have used data extension , dynamic content block and interactive email form .This approach works best for marketing teams instead of developers as I haven’t use any code for building dynamic content. I have elaborated the steps below which I followed to achieve this. Before creating email content I have done some of configuration which is described as well.

Prerequisite Configuration

1. Created sendable data extension to store customer information

• Sendable data extension is a table which stores subscribers/contact information which will be used for communication like email send.
• For making sendable data extension Is Sendable checkbox should be checked.
• Add atleast one email address for email send.
• In sendable data extension send relationship field becomes mandatory where need to assign relation between data extension and subscriber.

Steps

Go to Email Studio > Email > Data extension

Creation method: From the dropdown we can select any one option among three:

1. Create from existing: Used existing data extension where only field will be referred not values
2. Create from template: Use any existing template
3. Create from new: Create new

I have selected Create from new option

• Name: Enter any data extension name based on your convenient. I have given Name as Rental Car Customer Info.

• External Key: Unique key for data extension(If we don’t enter value on this marketing cloud automatically assign some value for it). I kept this field blank while creating after saving the record saw external key automatically assigned to it by marketing cloud.

• Description: Description related to data extension . I have enter description as “Storing Rental Firm Customer Info”

• Location: Under which folder want to save DE. I have saved on one of my data extension folder.

  

Set Retention Policy so that data extension and their data can be deleted after certain time:

• There are 3 option to delete DE :
• Individual records(Only single record will get deleted)
• All Records and Data extensions(Data extension will get deleted with all records)
• All records: (Only all records will get deleted)
• Period: We can select specific time when want to delete data or data extension.

Firstly I have enabled retention setting by selecting ON flag and selected apply to option as all records and data extension so that data extension and all records should get deleted. Under period option I have specified specific day so that after particular day all records and data extension will get deleted.

There are multiple option which can be used to delete the records or data extension.

Created fields under data extension to store customer information and Send Relationship between data extension and subscriber.

I have created multiple fields

• Subscriber key(Primary key for customer)
• Email address(Email Address Data Type)
• Recent car hire start date(Date data type)
• Recent car hire duration(Number data type)
• Recent car hire model(text data type)
• Recent car hire color(text data type)
• Recent car hire price(decimal data type)
• Recent customer name (text data type)

For all fields (except number and date field) I have assigned maximum length.

As subscriber key is a primary key for my sendable data extension so I have selected subscriber key field from relationship picklist to relates with subscriber info.

After creating data extension I have imported data on it using import wizard.

2. Created Email Content

Steps

Go to Email Studio > Email > Content

• Clicked on create button. Email message, Email Template, Content Blocks, Upload option was visible.

• Clicked on email template and there was two option available paste HTML and existing template.

• I have selected existing template option but can be selected paste HTML option also based on your business use cases.

  

Created content using content blocks like code snippet, free form, HTML, image block, Text, Advance content.

Added dynamic content block in email content

• Selected dynamic content and drag and drop to email content area where i want to include content.

• Double clicked on the dynamic content block and clicked on browse button to upload or select existing content for default content.

  

Created different dynamic content rules based on the criteria

• Clicked on create rule link + sign.

• Selected the data source as data extension or audience option as I have stored customer info on data extension and clicked on OK button.

  

In first rule the criteria I have defined based on the recent car hire duration field value and value I have assigned for this as greater than 15 days. According to me the users which fulfil this criteria they have shown trust on rental firm. Based on that created content for these users which will show them some good model of the car with compelling rent prices and unlimited mileage. Also, I have added some of the good deal in content to engage them for long term rental by comparing with their previous rental price and include some overall rental off.

In second rule the criteria I have defined based on the recent car hire duration field value and value I have assigned for this as less than equal to 7 days AND Recent car hire duration is greater than 1.

In third rule the criteria I have defined based on the recent car hire duration and recent hire car model fields. The values I have assigned for this as Recent car hire duration is equal to 1 day AND Recent car hire Model is the highest one which rental firm is providing.

In default criteria I have assigned all deals which rent firm can provide to their customers.

Used interactive email in email content for color preference

• Clicked on interactive email icon from content block and drag and drop into email content .

• Selected starting point as review and click on continue.

  

Previewed and Tested email using data extension which created to store customer information.

I have previewed and tested email using data extension values and verify how email content looks like based on different criteria.

In summary WYSIWYG helps marketing team to build personalize and dynamic content which helps in reengaging or engaging customers. Using WYSIWYG without HTML , code and SQL query email content can be build.

Conclusion

So in this article we show what was my approach to achieve dynamic content using WYSIWYG without any code , query , HTML , AMPScript. How WYSIWYG editor helps in creating dynamic content based on the criteria which helps marketing team to engage with customers based on their behavior/persona. Also we show with point of click /no code approach we can solve some of the problems.

WYSIWYG provides capability for coding as well. If there is any business scenario where need some complex data in that case we can use HTML and AMPScript code to build the content. Also in my approach I have selected data extension for creating rules it’s just one approach we can select list as well. The rules in dynamic content can be created based on any logical operator like (AND /OR) also greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to and so on. Interactive email can be used for multiple option as it has lots of built in capabilities.