With data-driven content data you can create different content areas within your email, send the email to one audience, with different content based on what you know about your contact.
Maybe you've collected data from a targeted audience, buyers of your products, or those who have expressed interest through your website or by a form submission. Get to know your audience and map out the content you want to create. Always create default content for those contacts who you don't have information.
Get started
Pre-planning is important when creating dynamic, data-driven content. Determine what you know about your audience. What information do you have on your customers? Then decide what content you want to send to each group. Gather information, content, images, and start pulling it all together in our composer. Be sure to review, revise, and test.
Create relational table personalization
In the details area of your email, choose your audience. Choosing your audience is required if you want to move forward to create relational table personalization. Easily insert content based on what you know about your contact's relational table data.
- Within data, you need to create a relational table query.
- Within your drag-and-drop email, you can turn on relational tables personalization per section. Click outside of the content area, on the design canvas where you want to enable relational table personalization, and set the proper relational table query in the settings pane that appears on the left side of the screen.
- Add your data-driven content to your email, determine the number of rows, order of information, and how many columns of information to display.
- Set the empty state details, including if you want to hide a block if the query data is empty.
Cart abandonment email example
We want to send an email reminding our customers of items that they've left in their online shopping cart. In our example, this customer left vintage spoons and stacking glasses in their cart. We're going to send them a remind with the items from cart, the item image, description, and price. We need the information in a relational table, our table looks like this.
Relational table fields
The following table depicts the relational table schema, this is just an example, your data may vary:
| Relational table field name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| *cartId (key) | Text | ID of the cart |
| *itemId (key) | Numeric | ID of the item in the cart |
| cartDate | Date Time | Date of the activity on cart |
| activityType | Text | Abandoned or purchased |
| Text | Email address (Joined with the database) |
|
| category | Text | Category of the item |
| description | Text | Product description |
| order | Numeric | Order of items |
| price | Numeric | Product base price |
| productId | Text | Product ID |
| productImageURL | Text | Product image URL |
| productName | Text | Product name |
| productURL | Text | Product image URL |
| itemColor | Text | Product color |
| itemSize | Text | Product size |
| total | Numeric | Quantity of the item in the cart |
For this email, we don't need all the information in the relational table, we are using category, description, email address, order, price, productID, productImageURL, productName, productURL, and total.
Build relational table queries
Next, we need to build a relational table query. A relational table query must be built before relational table personalization can be inserted into an email.
Our query will include the criteria cartDate is equal to today.
Then, we create our email with sections that include relational table personalization.
Add the relational table personalization in the composer
- Go to the section in your email (drag-and-drop editor), add a section to your where you want the data driven content. To add a section, hover over the location where you'd like the content located, and click the add icon.
- Click to the left or right next to the section where you want to use personalization and the Email section > Settings pane will appear on the left.
- Turn on the toggle to enable relational table section.
- You'll need to review Settings, Style, and Layout for your relational table section.
- In the email section Settings, choose the relational table query you created.
- Decide your maximum number of rows. If you are only using personalization for single values from relational tables, one row is fine.
- Select the column of data from your relational table and order by ascending or descending.
- Decide what to in an Empty state, including if you want to hide a block if the query data is empty.
- Disable relational tables if you need.
- In the Style section, use fill types and background colors.
- In Layouts, choose the layout type for your section.
Pro tip: Add a fixed width and height for the images based on your design.
Add the relational table personalization in the HTML editor
To add relational table personalization to an email in the HTML editor:
- Open the email.
- Select a contact source including a relational table.
- Position the cursor in the code field and click the relational table personalization icon in the panel of the HTML editor tab.
- Customise the relational table personalization:
- Select a query.
- Select the maximum number of rows used in the relational table. It's a good practice to keep a limited number of rows.
- Select the column name you want the data to be ordered by.
- Select if you want to order data in ascending or descending order.
- Click Add.
Preview your email
Preview the email in a number of different ways. Preview with dynamic rules, select the default or specific rules. Or preview by contact email, entering a specific email address from the database.