Using Custom Variables
Some of the many uses of variable content blocks:
- * Product follow ups (shampoo buyers vs. perfume buyers vs. brush buyers)
- * Differentiating users by donor level or location
- * “Thank you for signing up for our email list” vs. “There’s still time to sign up for our email list.”
- * Signature file for an assigned account representative
Often, you can use simple variable data fields like First Name, Company or your custom variables like Account Representative’s name ($$Custom02). In cases where you want longer variable data or want to include images or formatting, like in a signature file that has the specific email address, phone number and headshot of the Account Rep, you can use Variable Content Blocks. Variable Content allows you to assign every contact a specific block of content and then use a variable to display that content on an email. If your use case is for a one-time send, and you don't need to assign a block for use over time in multiple emails, you may want to consider Conditional Content.
For this example, we'll be setting up one email to deploy to Save the Puppies campaign donors. Depending on the monetary amount contributed by each donor, they'll receive a customized email informing them that they've provided either a bag of food or a kennel. When importing the donor contact list, we assigned the Custom Field 2 as Program Impact, and imported the data for "food" or "kennel" donors accordingly. Each recipient's email will contain content variables assigned based on the information in Custom field 2.
After signing in to the emfluence platform, click on “Content” at the top of the screen. Once in the Content page, select Content Blocks.
Click “New Content Block” on the upper left. Next, type in the title of the content block. The ID must be unique. You can choose to automatically generate the ID by clicking the “Automatically Generate” box. If you unclick the box, you will need to choose your own unique ID. Determine who can access and use the content block in the User Access drop down bar
Create your content block in the content area by using the WYSIWYG editor. (Click here for more information about using the editor.)
Save the Content Block. 
Make and save as many content blocks as you need for your email. After creating the content blocks, you can set them up to be a variable associated with your contacts. Before we bulk update our contact records to assign them a content variable, we'll name the content variable from the Options section of the Platform.
Now that the variable exists, you could assign blocks in an import or using the bulk update tool. When using the bulk update tool you would select which block to assign to your list through the dropdown. On an import you would include the block's ID (not name, but the ID) in the column for your Content 1 variable and map it like you would email, first name, etc.
To recap, contacts with the Donation Impact (Custom2) food who are in the Save the Puppies Donor File are assigned Food content, and everyone with the Donation Impact (Custom2) kennel will see the Kennel content.
Now it’s time to put this into the email. During the composition of your email, click the Content drop down bar, and chose the appropriate Variable Content, in our case, “Donation Impact” (Content 1).
In the Preview step, you won’t see your variable content based on the default view (it will be blank, just like a custom field). In order to verify your variable data, you can preview your email as if you were a specific recipient using “Preview Message For.”
If we enter Dave's emfluence email address and click Preview, we see this:
A preview of Jessica’s email looks like this:
We can also send a Pre-Flight Check using Dave's or Jessica’s version so we’re sure they pass spam filters and render correctly with their variable data filled in. Once you’re happy with your email and the variable content, continue the regular email process and deploy.