Audience segmentation for emails

Why create an audience segment on an alternate email template?

Customer messaging doesn't always benefit from a one-size-fits-all approach. For example, you may need to communicate country/region regulation requirements to a set of customers in specific countries. You can ensure that the target group of customers in those specific countries receive the required communication by creating an alternate email template with an audience segment. The customers that are not included in the audience segment will receive your standard messaging when making a purchase from your company.

Creating alternate email templates

Audience segmentation is available on two of Recurly's out-of-the-box email templates: New Subscription, and Payment Confirmation. Each of these templates have a default version you can use to send to all of your customers, or, can you can choose to create an alternate template version that will go to the customer segment you define in the "Audience" section at the bottom of the page.

A few things to note:

• Audience segments are only available for the New Subscription and Payment Confirmation email templates
• Only one criterion added to the Audience section must be met for the alternate template version to be sent to the customers who qualify
• Any customers with account or billing country codes not listed in the Audience criteria will receive the Default version of the corresponding email tempalte

How to create an alternate template

• Next to the Payment Confirmation and New Subscription email template headers, click the "Options" button
• Select "New Email Template"

• Provide your new alternate template with a name, and press Save Changes

• You will be redirected to your new alternate template. You can begin to make changes by customizing the email subject line, email body, and Audience section
• Note: Your alternate email template will not become active until you have specified at least one criterion in the Audience section. Until you set up Audience criteria, all customers will receive the Default email template treatment

Audience criteria

• You must set at least one criterion in the audience section to create the audience segment that will trigger the activation of the alternate template
• The segment builder is based off of "OR" logic, so only one criterion must be met by a customer on a given transaction for that customer to receive the alternate email template instead of the default

Locale Support

• The audience segment you create for an alternate template is applied at the template level- and supports all locales. This means you only need to set up your segment once. Locale support for the alternate template will be provided appropriately for customers who have a specific email language applied on their account
• You can customize the header and body content accordingly for each locale you support on the alternate template.
  • ( Example: You set up an alternate New Subscription email template. Your site's default language is English. You create a custom segment for customers with billing or account country codes in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Sweden. You will first customize the header and body content for your UK customers in English, then you can leverage locale support to customize your messaging on the alternate template in Italian and Swedish. Customer accounts with a billing or account country code where UK, Italy, or Sweden are configured, will receive the alternate template version. The Italian and Swedish locale translations of the alternate template will be sent to any customers who meet the criteria set and also have either Italian or Swedish set as the email language on their account. Customers who do not meet any of the criteria and have billing or account country codes outside of the UK, Italy, and Sweden, will receive the default New Subscription template.)
• If any countries are removed from the audience segment at a later point in time, customers with those account or billing countries will receive the default email template treatments moving forward

How to add audience criteria

• Press the "Add Attribute" button towards the bottom of the screen and select the attribute(s) you would like applied to your segment

• Add the desired country criteria in the type-ahead component(s) and press save

After pressing save, your audience segment has been successfully created and your alternate template is considered active.

Adding a PDF Attachment

You can add a PDF attachment to your alternate email templates. Similarly to supporting unique email subject lines and body content across locales on the alternate template, Recurly also supports one unique PDF attachment per locale, to ensure your appended message gets communicated to your customers in their preferred language.

How to upload a PDF attachment

• In the PDF attachment section, press "Choose File" and press Save Changes to successfully upload your PDF document. File size limit is 512 KB
• On active alternate Payment Confirmation and New Subscription templates, PDF document attachments will be included as a standard file attachment on the email sent to the receiving customer

Alternate locale support example:

Your new alternate email template

After you've successfully created and saved your new alternate email template, it will be added to the Email Templates list page beneath the header for the Payment Confirmation and/or New Subscription email template sections accordingly. From the Email Templates list page, you have the options to:

• Preview HTML
• Edit Template
• Rename
• Delete

Note: If you choose to delete an alternate template, you will be deleting all changes, uploaded attachments, and audience segments that you had created for that template and all supported locales for that template. Deleting an alternate template with an audience segment will result in all customers receiving the default email template treatment. You can create a new alternate template at any point in time after deletion, at which point you can customize it to meet your needs.

Renaming Templates

To rename a template, hover over the ellipses next to the alternate template you wish to rename, and click "Rename". Make sure to save your changes to successfully update the new template name.

FAQ

Can I update alternate email templates via the API?
Alternate email templates and all configurations within them can only be set within the UI

Can I create more than one alternate email template?
You can only create 1 alternate email template for the emails that are supported: Payment Confirmation and New Subscription