Use Conditional Content

Conditional Content lets you dynamically show or hide content in your emails based on your contacts' interests and other information in your account. With Conditional Content, you create a set of rules that determines the content that should appear in an email to contacts on your list. Doing so is a great way to personalize your campaigns.

Take Note

• You cannot manually input syntax inside the message variables. You must use the conditional content tool within the designer
• Conditional Content is available in:
  • all containers, structures, and sections in the Email Designer or Classic Designer. 
  • custom HTML campaigns when manually when adding through the conditional content modal or writing the conditional content logic. Note that ActiveCampaign Customer Experience team cannot assist with custom code

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How Conditional Content works

To make a block, section, container, or structure conditional, you'll need to select it in the Email Designer, then select the Conditional Content icon. From there, the floating segment builder will appear. Here, you can create a set of rules based on: 

• Contact fields and tags
• Deal fields
• Account fields
• Ecommerce fields
• Events you made under Event Tracking
• Contact's Geolocation, IP address, ID number, date and time the contact subscribed, and list subscription

Once a contact receives your email, they will see the content based on the rule(s) you set.

For example, let's say you sell interior paints, and you collected your customers' preferred colors in a custom field. From there, you can see that half of your customer list prefers yellow while the other half prefers blue. You can then add two image blocks to your campaign - one displaying yellow paints and the other showing blue paints. Then, you can use Conditional Content to set rules to display either image based on your contacts' interests. If a contact prefers blue, they will see the blue paint image in your email. 

Create Conditional Content

These instructions refer to the Email Designer (launched in 2022).

1. From the Email Designer, hover over the container, structure, or section you wish to make conditional. Then hover over the three dots to the left of the block.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the Conditional Content icon that appears.
   
   
   
   
3. A modal window will appear containing the segment builder. Use the segment builder to create the conditions you want to set.
4. Optional: Click "Add condition" to add additional conditions.
5. Click "Save" when complete.

When the campaign is sent, the content you made conditional will hide or display based on the rules you set.

View, edit, and remove Conditional Content rules

View Conditional Content rules

Once you create Conditional Content, you can view the rules you set for it. To do so, hover over the Conditional Content icon that appears in the top right of the block:

Edit Conditional Content rules

Once you create Conditional Content, you can edit the rules you set for it. To do so:

1. Click on the Conditional Content icon in the top right of the block.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the pencil icon.
3. The Conditional Content modal will pop up for you to make changes.
4. Click "Save" when complete.

Remove Conditional Content from your campaign

You can remove Conditional Content from your campaign. To do so:

1. Click on the Conditional Content icon in the top right of the block.
   
   
   
   
2. Click the trash can icon.
3. A confirmation will pop up. Click "Delete" to confirm that you want to delete all conditions.
4. A confirmation will pop up on the top right of your screen to confirm that the conditions have been removed successfully.

Create Conditional Content with the Classic Designer

1. In the Design step of the campaign creation process, hover over the content block you wish to make conditional. Click the Gear icon that appears to the right of the block.
2. Click the "Make Conditional" option.
3. A modal window will appear, displaying the floating segment builder. Use the builder to select the data to show the selected content block. For instance, if you sell interior paints, you could specify that if the contact's favorite paint color is "Yellow," then display an image showing your latest collection of yellow paints.
   
   In this example, you might add another image to the campaign directly below the other that displays an image showing a collection of blue paints if a contact's paint preference is "Blue."

When the campaign is sent, the images will hide or display based on whether the contact prefers yellow or blue paint colors.

Create Conditional Content with HTML or Text only email campaigns

You can use Conditional Content in HTML or Text-Only emails by inserting code. Conditional Content uses "If/Then" logic.

In the upper left-hand side of the campaign creation screen, you'll see "Insert." Click "Insert" to display a menu. Click "Conditional Content."

A modal window will display that allows you to configure the logic of your conditional content.
In this example, I'll display a different product name based on what the contact is tagged as interested:

After you've defined the conditions you want to use, click "Okay." This will automatically insert the conditional content logic into your campaign where your cursor is placed. Your code might look something like this:

Now you would modify this code where it says "Insert Content Here" to define what will display if they match your conditions and "Insert Alternative Content Here" to determine what will show if they do not match any of the conditions you've set. After it is modified, it might look something like this:

If you send an HTML email, you can insert any HTML or CSS code, including images, links, etc. Note that you can only insert text if you send a Text Only campaign.

Preview Conditional Content

To preview an email campaign personalized with conditional content:

1. Go to the Campaign Summary step of the campaign creation process.
2. Click Desktop Preview.
3. There is an email field in the upper right-hand corner of the Desktop Preview. Insert the email address of one of your contacts and click "Preview" to see how the campaign will appear for that contact when it is sent.

Unsupported Characters

The following characters are known to cause problems when used in conditional content:

• ‘ - Left-Angle Single Quote (aka, Opening single apostrophe, curly single quote)

• ’ - Right-Angle Single Quote (aka, Closing single apostrophe, curly single quote)

• “ - Left-Angle Double Quote (aka, Opening double quote, curly double quote)

• ” - Right-Angle Double Quote (aka, Closing double quote, curly double quote)

• { - Left Curly Bracket

• } - Right Curly Bracket

• % - Percentage Sign

• ` - Backtick