Content and personalisation

How to create campaigns and use personalization

We provide you with an editor that can easily create campaign content that is truly personalised, bespoke content to each of your subscribers.

• In your list of campaigns, click the Edit button by the campaign you wish to work with
• Once the campaign loads, click the Edit Content button in the taskbar
• For a specific campaign, click the Edit Content button in the left menu

The WYSIWYG editor has several variants, depending on the campaign settings (its format - plain text, HTML, combinations, and templates):

• When a campaign is made in the form of an SMS or in the case of a plain text email, the plain text editor is available.
• If HTML emails are set in HTML only, the editor will only have one bookmark with HTML content. If the email is a combination of HTML and plain text, the editor offers two bookmarks with custom content.
• If the content of the email is made up of a template, the editor provides 10 tabs - or 10 variants of custom content.

Import content

If the content of your campaign is already in HTML or as a website on your local computer, you can upload it to Mailkit using the Import button at the bottom right of the editor. Include either the URL of the web page whose content is to be imported or the file to be searched on your computer using the Browse button and clicking the Import button - the content is immediately inserted into the campaign editor. Depending on the formatting and style used, it may be necessary to edit the imported content in the editor in the resulting appearance. You can not import images from your local computer, so these pictures do not appear in the editor - you need to upload the images first to the file manager and then add them to the editor. The same applies to embedded stylized documents, javascripts, flash, etc.

Campaign personalization

One way to increase your campaign's effectiveness is to personalize your messages, for example by adding the recipient's address or other personal information that you have stored in your subscriber list.

For automated tagging, just click on the  icon in the campaign editor to choose from personalization codes, content and links and polls.

A complete list of supported system tags can be found here.

• Personalization code - Select the desired type of recipient information from the drop-down bar, which will be replaced by the individual dates of each recipient before sending the message.
  For example: To enter the recipient's name into the message body, NAME is selected, Mailkit will insert the tag into the body of the email in the place specified by your mouse cursor, by inserting the [FIRST_NAME] tag, which will be shown as (for example) "Mike" in the case where your subscribers full name is Mike Smith.

• Content code - You can insert the current day, month, or year into the message body. The desired information is selected from the drop down menu, which will be replaced by the current relevant data (current day, month, year etc.) at the time the campaign is sent.
  For example, if a date is to be entered in the email, first select day from the drop down, click the Insert button and repeat the procedure for month. So, the campaign editor will display two tags - [DAY] and [MONTH] - which will be swapped for the current date when the campaign is dispatched.

• Link code - A link can be inserted into the message body for Unsubscribing from the recipient list, a link for viewing the email in a Browser, and a link to Print the email. From a legal standpoint, the single most important link is the unsubscribe - so that every subscriber is simply able to opt out of a subscriber list. If an unsubscribe link is not inserted in the message body using this method then the system will automatically insert a standard unsubscribe link prior to sending the campaign.
  For example: To insert an unsubscribe link click on the drop-down menu, select unsubscribe link and click the Paste button. A link to the text "Click to Unsubscribe" is inserted into the body of the email. The text of this link can be edited in HTML.

• Polls - a poll is created by selecting Poll from the drop down. The [POLL number] tag will be inserted into the message body, which will be interchanged when the message is sent out with the relevant poll you have created.
• Micro-site - a list of available micro-sites is available when you select micro-site from the drop down menu.

Firstly;
- your subscriber list details needs to include the gender of your subscribers
- it must also include his / her surname
Provided you have the details above then you can add the following condition to the campaign editor:

Dear [% IF recipient.GENDER == 'M' -%]Mr [LAST_NAME][% ELSE -%]Ms [LAST_NAME][% END %]

In some cases there may be a situation where the recipient's gender may be missing from your records, so you can insert the following condition:

Dear [% IF recipient.GENDER == 'M' -%]Mr [LAST_NAME][% ELSIF recipient.GENDER == 'F'-%]Ms [LAST_NAME][% ELSE%]Customer [% END%]

... then in the case of a missing gender record (for example, gender not entered at sign-up), the subscriber will simply see "Dear Customer".

The link provided in the body of a campaign can be personalized to each recipient. The following options are available to insert a personalized link.

In the relevant field, the entire url address is entered - a link is inserted into the body of the recipient, where [CUSTOMx] is specified.
Only part of the URL is listed in the recipient's own field - a link is inserted into the body of the email, for example,
http://yourwebsite.com/[CUSTOMx].
(x = custom field number)