URL Personalisation

Using $AMF replacers in your campaigns allows you to personalise links for your contacts, based on data held in core or data tables, or other information.

Example: link to particular pages on your website, using an 'interests' field from a data table, so that each contact who clicked in the email would be directed to the page most suited to them.

Although the destination for each would be different, contacts would be recorded as clicking on the same link within the email, and this would be tracked in the Links Report.

Using AMF replacer tags

Field replacer tags take the form $AMF_FIELD_fieldname$. and are used instead of data personalisation such as [*data('interest')*].

Note: this syntax only works in the email body, and is unsuitable for URL links (as this would generate one unique link for every contact).
Tip: using[*data('fieldname')*]will still work, however it will not be tracked, and no activity for the link will be recorded.

To insert a replacer, add the $AMF_FIELD_fieldname$ to the URL section of a link dialogue box.

Example: enter interests= $AMF_FIELD_product_interests$ in the URL text box for a product interest link.

When a contact follows the tagged link, the tag is replaced with contacts' data from the core or data table field.

Note: the field name must be exactly as it appears in the table, and data table fields will need to be prefixed with the table ID separated with a full stop, e.g. $AMF_FIELD_5.postcode$.

Core table fields do not need the ID prefix.

Example: if using the email field, the link could look similar to this:

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<a href="http://site.tld/form?email_address=$AMF_FIELD_email$">    Enter our competition on our website
</a>

which would come out as:

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<a href="http://site.tld/form?email_address=example.user%40adestra-demo.com">    Enter our competition on our website
</a>
Note: replacers use URL encoding to escape a query string. Should you wish to use a URL without encoding you can use $AMF_FIELD_RAW$, though be careful as this can cause a number of issues, which may be hard to resolve.

Other replacers which can be used include:

$AMF_CAMPAIGN_NAME$ The name of the campaign
$AMF_CAMPAIGN_ID$ The internal ID of the campaign
$AMF_CAMPAIGN_REF$ An optional reference you can apply to the campaign, but this option is not enabled by default
$AMF_WORKSPACE_NAME$ The name of the workspace containing the campaign
$AMF_WORKSPACE_ID$ The internal ID of the workspace the campaign resides in
$AMF_PROJECT_NAME$ The name of the project the campaign resides in
$AMF_PROJECT_ID$ The internal ID of the project the campaign resides in
$AMF_LAUNCH_ID$ The internal ID for the launch
$AMF_LAUNCH_LABEL$ The launch reference that can be optionally entered at the point of launch
$AMF_LINK_LABEL$ The label assigned to the link, as used in the campaign's report
$AMF_LINK_URL$ The URL that the contact clicked on
$AMF_TABLE_ID$ The internal ID of the table
$AMF_CONTACT_ID$ The ID of the contact
$AMF_CONTACT_GUID$ Unique ID representing the contact
$AMF_SUBJECT_LINE$ The subject of the campaign
$AMF_FIELD_RAW$ Works like $AMF_FIELD but without encoding the input
$AMF_MD5_EMAIL$ The md5 hash of a contact's lower case email address
$AMF_SHA256_EMAIL$ The sha256 hash of a contact's lower case email address
$AMF_EMAIL_LOCALPART$ The lowercased local part of a contact's email
$AMF_EMAIL_DOMAIN$ The lowercased domain of a contact's email

There are also some automatically generated values which may be useful:

$AMF_RANDOM$ A random alphanumeric string, 16 characters long
$AMF_UNIQUE$ A string intended for use where a unique value is required. This is comprised of a random 8 character alphanumeric string with a hires timestamp appended
$AMF_AD_TAG_INTEGER$ This is used for various online advertising systems to generate unique numbers
$AMF_TIMESTAMP$ A timestamp in YYYYMMDDhhmmss format
$AMF_TIMESTAMP_HIRES$ A timestamp including milliseconds in YYYYMMDDhhmmssnnnnnn format

Note: long-time users of Adestra may be familiar with tags in the format $amf_email$.

This syntax is deprecated and we would advise using the $AMF_FIELD_fieldname$ equivalent formatting, e.g. $AMF_FIELD_email$.

Linking to a different URL for each contact using URLs in the data

It is possible to track a URL directly from your data when using a $AMF tag. However, there are some things you need to do in order for this to work:

  • ,The link itself must contain http:// in order to be treated as a link and tracked. For example:

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    <a href="http://$AMF_FIELD_website$">Click here</a>

  • T he URLs stored in your data must not contain http://. For example:

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    www.yourwebsite.com