Constant values in personalized messages

Constants are text values that appear in every message in a messaging campaign and display the same way in each message. You can define constants for a messaging campaign only if the communication that is referenced to the messaging campaign includes the corresponding constant personalization fields.

You define the value for each constant on the Mailing tab as part of the messaging configuration. Before you begin the mailing run, determine if constants are present in the communication that is referenced in the messaging configuration.

Note: Transactional messages does not support using constant personalization fields. Transactional message requests fail if the messaging that you enable for transactional email also defines constants.

Defining a value for every constant added to the messaging is not required to run the messaging. However, if you do not define a value for a constant, the document referenced by the messaging displays nothing in place of the constant personalization field. Depending on how and where you used constant personalization fields in the document, the missing content might be noticed by the email recipient. For example, the absence of a value for a constant is noticeable if you included a constant personalization field in a sentence.

The following versions of the same sentence illustrate the effect of not defining a value for a constant. In this example, the constant personalization field const_promotionCode is inserted into the sentence in the document template, as follows.

Enter const_promotionCode to receive this valuable offer.

  • When you define the constant as Customer Loyalty Code: ABC123, the recipient sees:

    "Enter Customer Loyalty Code: ABC123 to receive this valuable offer."

  • When you do not define the constant, the recipient sees:

    "Enter to receive this valuable offer."

Your actual results depend on how the constant value appears in the design of the message. To see how defining a constant might affect your message, configure sample data for the corresponding constant personalization field and use the Preview feature to view the result. For information about previewing your message using sample data for constants, see Sample data for personalization fields.