Siebel Marketing User Guide > Creating and Using Offers > Personalization Items >

Merge Fields Personalization Item

Use merge fields to customize offers by contact or prospect. Contacts or prospects can have multiple fields associated with them, each field defining some attribute of a contact or prospect (for example, the person's last name, their first name, or their account number). For each unique contact or prospect, the value of these fields may differ. You insert the merge field personalization element in the text and then the value of the Contact or Prospect field is populated into the text where you inserted the merge field personalization item.

The following simple example shows two prospects with the first names of Sally and Fred, how the personalization item appears in the offer before and then after the contact or prospect field is populated.

Before population in the offer text:

Hello [Field: First Name]!

When Sally receives the offer, she gets the following:

Hello Sally!

When Fred receives the offer, he gets the following:

Hello Fred!

In some contact or prospect records, a value might not exist for a non-numeric merge field. For example, the database record from which the value comes is a NULL entry. When the contact or prospect field is populated, the merge field may default to one of the following values:

• Empty string. The value is an empty string (a string containing no characters).
• Unspecified. The value is the word Unspecified.

For Web offers, surveys, events, and URLs to be available as personalization elements Web Offers, Web Surveys, Events, and Related URLs categories, you must add the records to the Web Offers, Web Surveys Related Events, or Related URLs lists. For more information, read About Associating Web Offers, Web Surveys, Events, and URLs with Offers.

You can insert any field from the Personalization Elements drop-down menu by selecting and inserting it into the body of the email message. For related information, read About Using Hyperlinks (HREF) in Offer Templates.

For example you may want to personalize the offer with the contact's name, such as: Exciting Offer for [Field: First Name] [Field: Last Name].

Using the Merge Fields category, you would select the personalization element [Field: First Name] and insert it into the desired location in the message. You would repeat this procedure to add a last name. Typically, the tags for personalization elements are enclosed in brackets ([ and ]).

During run time, the target values are substituted for these personalization elements. The response forms, product links, Web offer links, and Web survey links are encoded so that they become URL links containing the destination address, with campaign, offer, and recipient codes included. Thus, the URL in any text-based email can become long. The following list contains guidelines for setting up personalization elements:

• The Merge Fields list is driven by your configuration. If you are using the advanced approach, merge fields can be extended using fields from the segmentation module. For more information, read Using Merge Fields in Email Offers.
• The list of Merge Fields includes a calculated field called Current Date. This merge field is replaced by the Campaign Send Date when the campaign is launched.
• The Product Catalog Items are limited to those defined for the Product catalog page for the products associated with the offer.
• The list of Web offers is limited to those defined for this offer in the Related Web Offers list view tab.
• The list of Web surveys is limited to those defined for this offer in the Related Web Surveys view tab.
• The list of related events is limited to those events defined for this offer in the Related Events link bar. When you add a related event, you only display events with active dates and that have a status code of Executing or In Progress.
• Use related URLs to embed hyperlinks to offers and generic Internet Web pages in an offer. When a Contact or Prospect clicks this link, Siebel Marketing records a Campaign Response.
• Typically, response forms are Web forms that a contact or prospect can use to respond to an offer through the Web. The response forms for an email offer are Confirm Subscribe to List, Confirm Unsubscribe from List, Forward to Friend, One Click Unsub, Read Receipt, Request Call Back, Request More Info, Request Unsubscribe, Subscribe to List, and Unsubscribe from List.