Content Items and Rule Sets
Used in concert with CRMS email communication features, you can add "dynamic content" to your email communications by using content items and content rules sets features.
Dynamic content helps you create emails that deliver more specific, smartly-tailored messages to recipients, messages that are more likely to generate increased sales.
Email marketers use dynamic content technology to solve challenges such as the following:
- Customize updates by state, province or other geographical characteristics.
- Substitute different paragraphs of text or graphics in an email by applying rules based on demographics or other targeting data.
- Create cross-sell offers based on previous purchases.
- Alert customers to replenish consumable products that must be replaced regularly, or to schedule recurring services that must be performed at specific intervals, such as oil changes and tune-ups).
Using dynamic content features, your company can define pieces of content to be added to email communications, and also sets of business rules that selectively add these content items into different customer emails. You can define the pieces of content by using the Content Items options. You can define the selection rules by using the content rule sets options.
Adding a content rule set to an email communication causes specific pieces of content (content items) to be added to the individually addressed emails. When the individual emails are generated, the email system automatically applies matching rules to select the content. You can use content rule sets to display content items based on whether an email recipient is a member of the profiles and/or lists specified in the rule set.
Content items are chunks of email content. They can include rich content (HTML) or text-only content. You can add a content item directly to an email communication, by selecting it from a drop-down selection box in the Edit Email Communication wizard, or you can add a content item indirectly, through the use of content rule sets and their logic.
To add a content item directly to an email, you can use the Edit Email Communication wizard. (Adding a content item directly to an email is convenient, but it is not a proper example of dynamic content.)
To make a content item available for insertion into an email communication by means of a content rule set, you must associate the content item with a content rule set. Then, if the email communication is sent to a customer identified in the rule set, CRMS inserts the content item into that email.
How do you add a Content Rule Set to an email communication?
To define content items, select . To define a content rule set, select .
When you are constructing an email communication, you can insert a content rule set into the email message, just as you would insert any other type of predefined content. Using the Edit Email Communication wizard, you insert a reference tag for the content rule set into the email. If a matching condition in the rule set is triggered, then the content item identified by that matching rule is inserted into the email. The content is inserted at the location where you placed the content rule set reference tag.
How is an email communication that uses dynamic content different than other emails?
Email that does not use the full range of dynamic content features define one email communication for one list of recipients (that is, for the entire mailing list). Such email can include one level of personalization, which is very powerful. However, without the extra level of targeting afforded by dynamic content, this single level of personalization is limited to displaying the contents of specific data fields, including the following :
- Customer-related data values from fields that are already in the database
- Email address data that you have already specified (e.g., from name, from address, subject line)
- The existing loyalty-related URLs
- The loyalty-program data, such as the tier or club data you have defined in previous CRMS sessions.
As powerful as these personalizations are, they add the same basic set of rich content or text, and the same set of reference tags, to each email. If you lack content rule sets, you cannot insert different types of content for different recipients, nor can you insert different images and messages that are targeted at specific lists and customer profiles. Customer-targeted images, and informational contexts cannot be switched in and out to appeal to different targets.
Using content rule set features, you can insert variable content (different CRMS content items) where and how you want, based on the customer targets you choose. You can identify swappable content items (such as different images, URLs or paragraphs) and insert them in an email, based on different targeting parameters (including lists).
Using multiple content rule sets you can customize a single email to include appeals to several different customer attributes. That is, you can insert different pieces of rule-selected content in multiple locations in an email. Each inserted element can be based on a different segmentation criteria, so one email communication can effectively target multiple customer traits. The power is equivalent to using multiple variables.
Instead of creating a separate email communication for each segment in a emailing list, the content features let you compose an email that is made up of various targeted content items, depending on the rules you define to control the insertion of content items. Each content item can include its own personalization items, of course.
General Procedures
To add a content item directly to an email, you simply use the Edit Email Communication wizard. Depending on the type of content you are adding, you use either the Rich Content or Text-Only Content page of the wizard. With the Field Type set to Content Item, you can see and select from all of the content items that are currently defined.
To make a content item available for insertion into an email communication by means of a content rule set, you must specify the rules for using the content item in a content rule set. You do this by associating the content item with a profile or list identified in the rule set. Then, if the email communication is sent to a customer identified in the rule set, CRMS inserts the corresponding content item into that email in an intelligent way.