When you create a Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) mailing, you can use personalization to customize the mailing to your individual subscribers. This is a great way to engage your subscribers because they receive a message that has been tailored to them.

How does personalization work?

Personalization works by pulling the unique subscriber-specific values (such as first name, last name, title) from predefined fields in your integrated AMS/CRM database and populating your messages with those subscriber-specific values at send time. Each subscriber is sent a message that has been customized with their unique values that were retrieved from your AMS/CRM database.

You can further build on personalization by caching those unique subscriber-specific values in Thrive Marketing Professional, so they are more easily and quickly retrieved at send time.

Caching personalization data

Thrive Marketing Professional can "cache" (i.e., store internally) the values from your personalization fields.

And, there's built-in refresh functionality that simplifies keeping the cached values up to date.

NOTE: A refresh occurs by Thrive Marketing Professional connecting (via a "bridge") to your AMS/CRM database and synchronizing ("syncing") with it to retrieve the latest data.

• The cached records are automatically refreshed once a week to ensure that they are as up to date as possible in Thrive Marketing Professional.
• An Admin can also initiate a manual refresh if there are known updates (such as new subscriber records and changes to existing records) that are important to include in mailings.

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

Personalization fields

The integration supports personalization for the following fields.

You can select a personalization field from the Personalization toolbar. 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 an attribute. You can modify:

• 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 optional; it is used when there is not a value specified for this attribute for a subscriber. If specified, the personalization placeholder in the mailing will use the default value. To learn more, see Personalization Caching for Integrations.
• If you do not want to use a particular attribute 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 the Campaign List Detail row and select Base Views.
4. Double click 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 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 have 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 try to select additional fields).

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

Refresh your cached personalization data

Cached 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 popup window and click the Subscribers tab.
2. Click Columns and add the personalized field that you want to preview – simply click the plus sign (+) that corresponds to the personalization you want 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 on the Review & Send tab (see Sending).

NOTE: When you publish a mailing to a remote subscriber, Thrive Marketing Professional inserts personalization values based on the tiered-approach logic that is described in Personalization Caching for Integrations.