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Dynamic Content at CakeMail

Last Thursday, some CakeMail users received an email from me.

Twice.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you who didn’t opt-out (or worse, brand me as SPAM) as a result of the erroneous send. By the same token, I’d like to reassure you all: it won’t happen again.

What happened:

When creating my groups, I used rules that looked like this:

Segmentation in Email Marketing: keep it simple!

When I should’ve use rules that looked like this:

Groups in Email Marketing should follow simple but exclusive rules.

And so some of you got different emails on the same day.

What I’m doing to make sure it never happens again:

Enter Dynamic Content.

Essentially, I’m creating one email with several logical tests to cover the different scenarios of each of the recipients on my list.

Admittedly, this is a tool best left to advanced HTML users, or to marketers who really don’t want to spam people. I’ll be honest: I asked for help from three members of my development team before doing anything crazy.

Like sending it.

The simplest solution

If you know nothing about HTML, it’s best to avoid using Dynamic Content altogether. You can achieve some pretty neat results using [Fields] and a very well prepared CSV file that you can import.

The simplest solution would’ve been to use rules that were absolutely exclusive, such as the second example, and use a CSV with custom fields and information, pulled from our Customer Relationship Management tool, as mentioned above.

So why dynamic content?

It’s a failsafe mechanism to help make sure that my list of subscribers never gets two emails on the same day. With a properly coded email, I can have only ONE email per week sent to all of my list, not a series of emails sent to different groups.

What’s more, I share a character flaw with the world’s only consulting detective:

That’s your weakness. You always want everything to be clever.

“The Reichenbach Fall”, Sherlock, BBC., London, 20 May 2012.

And if anything, Dynamic Content feels rather clever.

Author Cakemail Support

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