Personalization is a great way to engage your subscribers because you can use personalization fields to customize your Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) mailings. It works by pulling the values from predefined fields in your integration database and using those values to populate your messages with subscriber-specific data, such as name and title.

Caching personalization data

Thrive Marketing Professional can also "cache" (i.e., store internally) the values from your personalization fields so that they are more easily and quickly retrieved at send time.

• These cached records are automatically refreshed once a week to ensure they remain accurate.
• The refresh can also be manually initiated if you know there have been updates, such as new integration-database records or changes to existing records.
• The refresh occurs by Thrive Marketing Professional connecting to (via a "bridge") and synchronizing ("syncing") with your AMS/CRM database to get the latest data.

Refer to the sections later in this article for information on enabling personalization caching and refreshing the cached data.

Personalization fields

This integration supports many personalization fields, so you'll have plenty of options when you want to add subscriber data to your mailings. The integration supports personalization for the following fields.

You can select a personalization field from the Personalization toolbar tool. The personalization code has the following format:

%%WSI||FIELDNAME%%

Thrive Marketing Professional receives the data to populate the code when the mailing is sent.

Manage your personalization Attributes

You can access the Attribute window to modify data elements for your personalizations.

1. Navigate to Admin > Setup > Bridge Configuration.
2. Click List of Attributes (also leads to edit).
3. Click Edit for your desired attribute. You can modify the following fields:

• Internal Name
• Comment
• Display Name
• Personalization Default

The Data Element is the Aptify name of the field. It cannot be changed in Thrive Marketing Professional.

The Personalization Default is used when no value exists for a subscriber's personalization field. The field populated in the mailing defaults to the personalization default value.

If you do not wish to use a particular piece of data from Aptify for personalization, uncheck the Attribute Use: Personalization checkbox.

Custom Personalization fields

This integration supports custom personalization fields. If more personalization fields are needed, identify the desired fields and then contact your Aptify administrator. The administrator must alter the base view (vwPersonCampaignDetails under Campaign List Detail entity) to now include these new fields.

Static personalization fields are also supported.

As above, personalization data is not stored locally in Thrive Marketing Professional; data is gathered from Aptify just before sending a mailing.

To create a custom Aptify personalization field, log into Aptify as an administrator. Then:

1. Click Framework and select Entities.
2. Click the Find Records (binocular) icon and search for Campaign.
3. Double click on the Campaign List Detail row and select Base Views.
4. Double click on Person Campaign Details and select Fields.
5. Double click to modify the Display Name.
6. Click the Entity dropdown list to use a field from an area other than the Campaign List Detail.
7. Select an Entity. If the requested entity is not joined to the base view, you will need the Join Foreign Key. Click on another field to see which entities have already been joined.
8. Click the Entity field to see which fields are currently associated with the selected entity.
9. Select a Field.
10. Click OK.
11. Click OK (Base Views Record).

The save must complete successfully and the Database Object record must be generated during the save.

Aptify can assist if the Database object has to be manually generated.

Personalization caching

Thrive Marketing Professional allows remote personalization fields to display in your Thrive Marketing Professional accounts as table columns. These personalizations are ultimately cached in Thrive Marketing Professional, and they refresh once a week (through a behind-the-scenes process) or manually. When enabled, these personalization fields appear as selectable columns in any subscriber listing, and you can preview data in those fields.

Enable Personalization caching

Before you begin, you'll need to enable the personalization cache in your account. Next, you'll select the fields you wish to cache.

1. Navigate to Admin > Setup > Bridge Configuration.
2. Click List of Personalization Attributes.
3. Click the Plus (+) icon to open the list of integration personalizations.
   To cache data for a value, check its corresponding checkbox.

You can select up to 20 fields (you’ll receive an error if you attempt to select additional fields).

4. When complete, click Save Changes & Refresh Cache.

Refresh your cached Personalization data

As above, selected personalization fields sync weekly. Additionally, you can sync on an ad hoc basis by clicking Refresh Personalization Cache on the Bridge Configuration page (Thrive Marketing Professional displays the date of the most recent sync).

Test your Personalizations

1. Open the Target Group information pop-up window and click the Subscribers tab.
2. Click Columns and add the personalized field that you wish to preview – simply click the Plus Sign (+) that corresponds to the personalization you wish to view.
3. Click OK to save your changes.

Now, when you view the columns, you’ll see all the personalization fields with the appropriate previews.

Testing Personalizations in Mailing Designer 2

You can test personalizations directly in Mailing Designer 2 from the Review & Send tab (see Sending).

NOTE: When you publish a mailing to a remote subscriber, Thrive Marketing Professional uses the personalization values that have been cached.