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About Personalization Categories

Personalization categories are categories of supported embeddable object types. Depending on which category type you select, the Personalization Elements list contains the available elements for that category.

The available personalization categories are:

• Events
• Merge Fields
• Product Catalog Items
• Related URLs
• Response Forms
• Web Offers
• Web Surveys

About the Merge Fields Personalization Category

Merge fields allow you to customize offers by contact or prospect. All 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 element.

For example, you might have two prospects with the first names of Sally and Fred. The following simple example shows how the personalization element 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]!

After Values are Populated in the Offer

When Sally receives the offer, she sees the following:

Hello Sally!

When Fred receives the offer, he sees 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 might 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 details, see Associating Web Offers, Web Surveys, Events, and URLs with Offers.

You can copy any field from the Personalization Elements list and paste it into the body of the email message. For related information, see Using Hyperlinks (HREF) in an Offer Template.

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

Using the Merge Fields category, you would select the personalization element [Field: First Name] and press CTRL+C to copy it. Then, you would paste (CTRL+V) the field or fields into the offer template text, or the subject line of the email. 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 system configuration. If you are using the advanced approach, merge fields can be extended using fields from the segmentation module. For more information, see Using Merge Fields in an Email Offer.
• 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 will only see events with active dates and that have a status code of Executing or In Progress.
• Related URLs allow you to embed hyperlinks to offer and generic Internet Web pages in an offer. When this hyperlink is clicked on by a Contact or Prospect a Campaign Response is recorded.
• 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 Unsubscribe from List, Subscribe to List, Read Receipt, One Click Unsub, Forward to Friend, Request Unsubscribe, Request More Info, and Request Call Back.

Using Merge Fields in an Email Offer

Your application can be configured to use email merge fields in the following ways:

• Basic. Provides a static set of merge fields based on the campaign recipient business component. These merge fields are available when your organization has not licensed or deployed the marketing segmentation module.
• Advanced. Provides a flexible set of merge fields based on data from any data source or table within the Siebel application. The merge fields in this case are controlled by the Personalization Format (Email Server list format) that you select for the email offer.

In the Basic configuration, each category has a number of personalization elements. For example, the Merge Fields category has the following personalization elements (depending on the personalization format used):

• [Field: M/M]
• [Field: First Name]
• [Field: Middle Name]
• [Field: Last Name]
• [Field: Account]
• [Field: Account Location]
• [Field: Job Title]
• [Field: Work Phone #]
• [Field: Home Phone #]
• [Field: Cellular Phone #]
• [Field: Fax Phone #]
• [Field: Email Address]
• [Field: Current Date]
• [Field: Source Code]

In the Offers screen, in the Advanced view tab, you need to select the appropriate personalization format for the email offer in the email offer form. When you create an email offer, the values for the Email Marketing Server and Personalization Format automatically are set based on settings established by your administrator.

If CHANGEME is the value in the Personalization Format field, then you have not selected a set of merge fields. If a path name appears in the Personalization Format field, you should see merge fields in the Edit Email view tab, after selecting Merge Fields in the Personalization Categories field.

To select a Personalization Format (merge fields) for an email offer

1. Navigate to the Offers screen.
2. In the Offers list, drill down on the name of the email offer.
3. Click the Edit Email view tab.
4. Click the Personalization Format select button.
5. In the dialog box, select the appropriate format from the folders that appear.

   For more information about creating Email Server formats, see Siebel Marketing Installation and Administration Guide.

6. In the Edit Email form, from the Personalization Categories drop-down list, choose Merge Fields.

   The merge fields should appear in the Personalization Elements list.