Using Lead Tokens Vs. Snippets For Dynamic Emails

[Anonymous]

I am trying to build out very customized email onboarding programs. I am wondering if it's best to do the customization leveraging values from lead fields/tokens, or using segments/snippets.

For instance:

"I see that you (token for registered for Vs attended) a recent Canon webcast, "(token for recent webcast attended)". I wanted to follow up and...

For some background, Canon provides a wide variety of (token for service related to the webcast) that can help you (token for how the webcast/service can help you)."

I can either use these tokens or try to build the emails out using snippets/segments.

Initially, it seems easier to set this up using lead tokens by populating the fields in smart campaigns related to each program, but I am not sure if this is best practices. It may be risky if the fields are not connected to one another (e.g., one field gets updated but another field does not) and the resulting email shows inconsistent copy (e.g., content description does not match the name of the piece of content downloaded because the fields didn't both update properly).

Any thoughts on using one strategy vs the other. Is one considered best practices? Thanks!

Steve

[Anonymous]

Hi Stephen,

In my experience, Snippets (which use Segments) are used for more global customization of email content, such as having a different address in your email footer for each geographic location of your company. You set the address within the Snippet editor, using a segment for Geographies, for example.

For this case, you actually may be better off using program tokens. These emails sound almost like a follow-up email to the webcast, in which case you could set up email templates within your webcast programs, and have tokens within those programs for each dynamic area of the email you want to be specific to each webcast, as follows:

Webcast Program Template -> My Tokens:

• Webcast Name
• Service Related to Webcast
• How Webcast Service Can Help You

Website Program Template -> Email Assets:

• Follow-Up Email_Registered
• Follow-Up Email_Attended

You could hard code values for Registered vs. Attended within the two emails, and have {{my.Tokens}} built into the emails as your dynamic content.

Thanks,

Robin

[Anonymous]

Thanks Robin! I appreciate the insights!

That is how I currently have it set up -- using my program tokens to populate fields/emails. I was just curious to know if in the long run, that might create some problems that I am not currently accounting for. Sounds like you don't foresee any issues.

Thanks so much! I appreciate your assistance.

Steve

[Anonymous]

I have a questions along these lines. I am trying to figure out how I would send an email but I want the email to come co-branded from 50 different companies based on who it's going to. SO, basically if the lead has a primary wholesaler of X, then drop in X logo in the top and drop in X Signature and X partnership copy at the bottom. I would need to have 50 different versions and this would happen on virtually every email we do. Is there an easier way to do this? I'm also getting hung up on the from email address. By law does it have to be an email associated with my company, or is there a way to change the from email to be tokened in based on the primary wholesaler of the lead? It's a very complicated thing to do but we basically are being asked to send emails on behalf of our wholesalers to their producers who are in our database and we are already emailing, but they want it to seem like the email isn't coming from just us. Any help would be appreciated!

[SanfordWhiteman]

You should probably open a new thread, but I would use Velocity (Email Script) tokens for this case. They'll give you the most compact & reusable expression of your 50 segments.

As far legality, there's no general "by law" issue, but you should have all From/Reply-To domains set up with Marketo's DKIM. This means a lot of communication with others' IT but you don't have a choice -- that's how you prove that the domain owner gives tacit approval to the content.