Personalisation in non-English

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

Do any of you know of best practice advice on how to deal with personalisation in different non-English languages.

I know that German has some needs around salutations (It is not as simple as Mr & Ms aparently) and other European languages such as Czech and Bulgarian change the way a person's first name or last name is written when used in a salutation.

Examples - My name in Bulgarian is 'Любен', but in a solutation it would be 'Любене'.  And two examples from Czech - 'Bohonek' becomes 'Bohoňku' and 'Svoboda' becomes 'Svobodo'.

We do email marketing in a lot of different EMEA languages (Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, German, Norwegian, Polish, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish with more coming on stream this year) and thus I wanted to see if there is a good centralised source of info on how to deal with linguistic issues such as this.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Luben

[Gerard_Donnell4]

Hi Luben Solev​,

I have had similar pains.  I don't think there is a library or anywhere you can get a clear set of answers.  The only way I have found to deal with these is through creating velocity scripts ( http://developers.marketo.com/email-scripting/ ).

I have pasted an example of the German salutation velocity script I created.  It is definitely not nice code and doesn't stick to the DRY (don't repeat yourself) best practices, but it works. Sanford Whiteman would probably know best about this topic. 

I create a velocity script token at the program level. All of the double ## are comments to explain what is happening. 

I call mine {{my.EmailSalutation}} and then just reference it at the very top of the email.

##check if the Salutation is Herr

#if(${lead.Salutation} == "Herr")

##if the Salutation is Herr, use the salutation 'Sehr geehrter Herr'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrter Herr ${lead.LastName},")

##check is the Salutation is Frau

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Frau")

##if female, use the salutation 'Sehr geehrte Frau'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrte Frau ${lead.LastName},")

##check if the Salutation is Herr Dr.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Herr Dr.")

##if the Salutation is Herr Dr., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrter Herr'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrter Herr Dr. ${lead.LastName},")

##check if the Salutation is Frau Dr.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Frau Dr.")

##if Frau Dr., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrte Frau Dr.'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. ${lead.LastName},")

##check if the Salutation is Herr Prof.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Herr Prof.")

##if Herr Prof., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrter Herr Prof.'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. ${lead.LastName},")

##check if the Salutation is Frau Prof.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Frau Prof.")

##if Frau Prof., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrte Frau Prof.'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrte Frau Prof. ${lead.LastName},") 

##check if the Salutation is Herr Prof. Dr.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Herr Prof. Dr.")

##if Herr Prof. Dr., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. Dr.'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. Dr. ${lead.LastName},")

##check if the Salutation is Frau Prof. Dr.

#elseif(${lead.Salutation} == "Frau Prof. Dr.")

##if Frau Prof. Dr., use the salutation 'Sehr geehrte Frau Prof. Dr.'

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrte Frau Prof. Dr. ${lead.LastName},")

#else

##otherwise, use this Salutation

#set($greeting = "Sehr geehrte(r) Frau/Herr ${lead.LastName},")

#end

##print the greeting and some content

${greeting}

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot Gerard.  That's very useful code on the DE personalisation conundrum.  Much appreciated!

[Anonymous]

Have a look to the Apache Velocity Engine - User Guide

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot Karina.  I will look at that guide in some detail.