MESSAGE PERSONALIZATION AND SCRIPTING
Introduction
With ListManager, you can easily create unique, one-to-one emails tailored to the exact needs and interests of your recipients, without having to create more than one message.
The easiest way to personalize your message is to use the Insert Field , Insert
Condition , and Insert URL wizards when creating content. This section discusses how to manually insert these tags if you don't want to use the wizards, or if you'd like to do more advanced personalization and scripting.
There are four major categories of message personalization: Mail Merge, Clickthrough
Tracking, Conditional Content, and Advanced Scripting.
Mail Merge Tags
let you insert directly into your email messages information from your database, or from procedures ListManager performs. The classic example of this is to write "Dear Bob" in Bob's email, "Dear Mary" in Mary's, and so on.
Clickthrough Tracking, Opens and HTML Detection
let you include tags that allow you to track the success of your mailing. They allow you to track clickthroughs, detect whether someone has opened your message, or whether or not a recipient has HTML capability.
Conditional Content Commands
allow you to insert blocks of text into your message depending on whether certain conditions are true for a particular recipient. As a simple example, suppose you know that Bob has a dog, but Mary does not. You can tell ListManager to add a special paragraph promoting dog biscuits into all messages going to customers who have dogs. Bob would get this special paragraph in his email, while Mary would not.
Invite (Referral Feature)
allows your members to invite their friends to join the list. List members click on a link, which takes them to a referral form. They fill in the names and email addresses of their friends, who receive an invitation to join the list
Advanced Scripting
allows you to insert complex, highly dynamic content in your message. In ListManager, message personalization take advantage of a highly flexible programming language called Tcl. You don't have to be a great programmer to create and use custom scripts! This manual will show you a variety of easy templates for you to follow to create Tcl scripts. People with programming experience will also find that Tcl is a very powerful tool for extending the functionality of their messages.
How Do I Use ListManager's Personalization?
All mail merge tags, conditional content commands, and advanced scripts must begin and end with double percent signs (%%). Upon sending, ListManager will automatically replace the script with its appropriate result in the outgoing message.
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www.lyris.com
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