Practical Personalization: Birthday Lists

In this issue of List Building for Bloggers I'll step you through using birthday lists to help deliver additional value to both your clients and you sponsors, via custom fields.

[This is the latest article in the List Building for Bloggers series – Click here to read all the recent #LBB posts]

Birthday Lists - The Theory

The idea is to ask the subscriber as they subscribe what month they were born in, and then to email them something special from you - or your sponsors - to celebrate the birthday. Why is this a good thing?

• It helps reinforce the relationship between you and your subscribers;
• It helps incent readers to stick around for their rewards;
• You can sell the birthday mailing to sponsors or use affiliate monetization.

Birthday Month, not Birthday Date

So we're going to ask subscribers for the month they were born: January, February etc. We're not going to ask them to enter their birthday.

Why?

• Choosing a month is easy - there are only 12 options;
• Entering dates is a hassle and error prone, especially if you have international readership;
• We're only going to use the month anyway (mailing them on their birthday is a daily chore - don't want that) - the extra data isn't any use in this case;
• Some people don't want to give their date of birth for a variety of reasons, but just asking for the month is basically harmless.

So asking for the month only make sense all round - less friction, no privacy issues, and much less work for us.

Birthday Lists - The Practice

Setting Up the Custom Fields

[Note: We're going to use FeedBlitz's UI for the step-by-step here, but most email services support this kind of thing too; ask their support function for help] 

1. In FeedBlitz, click the Newsletters tab and pick "Custom Fields" from the left side bar.
2. Click "Confgure Custom Fields"
3. Click the "Add Custom Fields" button

Now let's define the field. Call it (say) "BirthMonth" (without the quotes). Since we want to make sure all the data is entered correctly, and we know the potential choices, define the field as "Choice" - a list is drop down box, which is more compact, whereas radios are easier to use but take up more space.

Now we have to enter the values we're going to allow. January through December, right?

Not so fast.

Here's the planning part. Are you going to require people enter the field? What about existing subscribers who have not shared their birth month with you? What will the default be?

If the field is optional AND you're using the list version of the field, you need to add a 13th option. Why? Because if the user doesn't pick a month the list box will just use the top value; you're going to end up with a lot of folks in January! So for lists, add a 13th value, call it "--Pick Your Birth Month--", give it the undefined value and drag it to the top of the list.

You also need to decide what you're going to store in the custom field - the month name? The month number? FeedBlitz will default to the name you type in, but you can change that to 01 to 12, for example, or the abbreviations like Jan to Dec instead. This matters if you're going to export the data later and use it in another system. Get it right now, otherwise you'll have to "translate" the data when you export it for use elsewhere.

Anyway, by the time you're done, you're going to end up with a screen that looks something like this:

Note that we've made the field optional (so the new subscriber doesn't have to enter it if they don't want to), that it is not hidden on the form, and we've added a prompt and some popup help.

Creating Segments

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you defined the database values for the birth month to be the abbreviations: Jan, Feb, Mar etc.

Here's the FeedBlitz segment expression that picks all the subscribers, like me, with birthdays in April:

BirthMonth="Apr"

Easy! You can do this when you send your first mailing to your April birthdays (on March 31st in this case) via Newsletters - Mailings - Newsflash. At the foot of the screen you can create the segment expression - and save it for the same time next year. (In FeedBlitz v4, you can define segments in advance, getting the job done much faster).

One List, 12 Segments, Happy Birthdays!

And it's as simple as that. With a simple field, scope narrowed down to keep it simple, your one list has now become much more powerful. No need for fancy triggers or rules or what have you; just a single well-defined custom field.

Wait: What are you going to send?

With the mechanics out of the way, the real work begins: What are you going to send readers on their birthday?

• If you're e-commerce, a special coupon or discount code valid for the month.
• For content marketers, perhaps a special offer on your e-Book or webcasts.
• Service provders - a special consultation, an hour of your time, perhaps?
• For crafters, an appropriate seasonal item or tip.

You get the idea. Everyone of us has something we can offer, and your subscribers will totally value that special something you're giving them. Just make sure it is special.

Next Up

Before I get to DIY vs, outsource, I'll address the audience request on graphic design.

About List Building For Bloggers #LBB

Written by Phil Hollows, the FeedBlitz Founder and CEO, List Building for Bloggers (#LBB) is a series of posts to help you make the most of your blogging by harnessing the power and capabilities of email, the universal social network, with your bog and social media communications. No matter whether you're a novice or a more advanced blogger, there will be something for you to learn, apply and benefit from in this series. Click here to read more about #LBB

P.S. If you think your friends or followers would find this series valuable, please retweet on Twitter or "Like" on Facebook using the buttons below. Don't forget to use the #LBB hashtag when you do. Thank you! And if you have a comment, contribution or something else to say, please comment too. :-)

   

Custom Fields Tutorial: Personalization

So far in this tutorial series I've covered custom field definition and subscriber data capture, analyzing the data and segmentation. This post is about personalization, which tailors the content (and even the layout) of your newsletters depending on whom you're sending to and what you know about them.

Using the Graphic Design Template Editor

Personalization requires you to use a custom graphic design template, since personalization modifies the HTML used to format the emails. To find the template editor, go to the Newsletter Center for the relevant blog, and click the "graphic design" link (marked by the icon you see at the left). You don't have to enable the template right away, however: you can build out the personalization in the template and test it using its preview function before you go live.

Personalization Basics

The most basic form of personalization is simply to have the system substitute the custom field in to the newsletter. Say you have the custom field FirstName and you want to build a basic greeting "Dear FirstName" at the top of the newsletter.

If you just type FirstName into the template, then what happens is that the template just thinks that's regular text, and will simply add "FirstName" to your newsletter. Yuck. To tell the template that we want to use a custom field variable, you enclose it in template tags <$ and $> (just like the other template variables that you see underneath the editor). So, to substitute in the recipient's first name, you enter the text <$FirstName$> into the editor. The greeting therefore looks like this:

Dear <$FirstName$>:

Custom field variable names are not case sensitive, so you can also write this and it will work:

Dear <$firstname$>:

You can use any of your custom fields this way. Easy! Don't forget that the custom field "email" is pre-defined for you, and so you can use it as <$email$> in your template.

Default Values

But what if the user hasn't completed the registration form yet, or the field you want to use was optional and the user didn't enter any data? In this case, FeedBlitz will use the default value you specified when you defined the field. If you didn't specify a default, FeedBlitz will replace the tag with nothing (i.e. empty text).

Unknown Visitors

Remember that that your template is used in places other than your newsletter mailings. It's also used to format:

• The subscription form;
• The online preview;
• Subscriber confirmation landing pages;
• Activation emails.

In the first two cases, your template is much more likely to be seen by a visitor who is not a subscriber, or is not logged in. In which case they are unknown to FeedBlitz, and the custom fields are all going to take their default values, if defined. But the defaults might not make sense in all of these locations - what to do?

Conditional Fields

The answer is to use conditionals - if statements. The FeedBlitz custom field template system supports the following conditional tags: <$if$>, <$else$> and <$endif$>. Rather than delve into syntax, it's simpler to show a couple of basic examples to demonstrate they work:

<$if email=""$>You are not logged in<$else$>Hi there, <$FirstName$><$endif$>

and:

<$if FirstName=""$>Dear Visitor:<$else$>Dear <$FirstName$><$endif$>

The first example changes the output depending on whether or not the subscriber is logged in, and the second one changes the salutation depending on whether the FirstName field is empty or not.

Conditionals are therefore a great way to:

• Alter content where the reader is unknown;
• Change the output based on a custom field's value.

Although the examples above used an <$else$> tag, you do not have to have one. So this is fine:

<$if premiumfield="1"$>You are a premium customer!<$endif$>

What you must have is a corresponding <$endif$> for each <$if$> you start.

If you use hidden fields you can use them in these template expressions, but if you expose them in the template like this <$HiddenFieldName$> then the content of that field will be revealed in the output. So be careful and test using the preview to avoid any awkward subscriber data revelations. Like segmentation rules, text comparisons are case insensitive.

Conditional Tests

Conditional testing works in the same way that segmentation does (it's the same code under the covers). So you can test using math, parentheses to control precedence, and the following logical operators:

=,==,!=,<>,<=,>=,AND,&&,or,||,IN

So you can write:

<$if favoritecolor!="blue"$>Why did you did not pick blue?<$endif$>

Nested If Statements

You can also nest if statements to multiple levels, so that (for example) you can decide (a) whether the subscriber is logged in, and (b) whether to do something based on what you know about them. Here's an example based on a Gender custom field for a clothing store:

<$if gender=""$>Please complete our registration form or log in<$else$><$if gender="m"$>Men's ties are on special this week<$else$>Half off leading designer handbags<$endif$><$endif$>.

The special offer is only presented to registered subscribers, and that the offer is different based on what you know about that subscriber. Note also that each opening <$if$> has a corresponding <$endif$>.

If you get this wrong, the template editor preview (and other screens where the template is used if you take it live with an error in it) will display "syntax error" if your statements don't match up properly. So don't forget to test, and make sure you have both the leading "<$" and trailing "$>" (i.e. make sure you write "<$if some logical test $>" and "<$else$>" and "<$endif$>", and NOT "<$if some logical test>" or "<$else>" or "<else>" or "<endif>" etc.).

Advanced Personalization

You can also use conditionals around HTML tags and page elements to based on subscriber data. For example, you could define an image in the editor, and then precede it with the opening <$if> statement and put the <$endif$> after the image. The image will only be put into messages and screens where the <$if$> statement says it should. Really advanced users can go into the HTML source and use conditionals on the raw HTML for extensive personalization of styles and layouts, but that takes great care.

And no matter what you do, don't forget to test!

Testing, testing, testing...

And test more than your newsletter. Here are my tips to ensure that your template works everywhere it's going to be used:

• While you're editing, test using the online editor's preview feature.
• After you enable the template, test using your ID:
1. The online preview;
2. The subscription form.
• Log out, and then repeat steps 1 and 2 above.

If all the above tests work out the way you want then your template will work wherever it's used.