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Statistics have well & truly proven that a personalised message will always get more engagement than a generic one - but getting more data out of your contacts so that you can personalised in the first place isn't always easy. After all, people are often reluctant to provide much information when signing up to a mailing list.
A concept that often works well in this regard is 'gamification'. This allows you to turn the data collection & enrichment process into a 'game' for the contact. There are many ways you can do this, but a strategy often used in marketing platforms is the use of 'progress bars' or 'completion meters'. In other words, 'unlock 100%' or 'collect all of the stars' - and so on.
In our how-to guide below, we'll build an automation that counts how 'complete' a contacts' profile is when they sign up. The more complete it is, the more 'stars' they will see in an email that gets automatically sent to them just after they subscribe to your list.
Although this is a fairly simple example, you can definitely build upon it if you're got something specific in mind to suit your needs.
Ideas & Inspiration - Our Content Examples
Here are some screenshots of the form and email we'll be building for this use-case example. Of course, you can adjust the wording and design to suit your needs. The email
To re-cap, we're building:
- a subscribe form (and an accompanying update profile form, for those contacts that decide to give you more information)
- an automation that checks how complete someone's 'profile' (contact information) is, and...
- an automation that sends an email where the content varies based on how much information was provided at the time of subscribing. The email also drives the contact to complete their profile (if they have an incomplete profile).
Form design example:
Below is our subscribe form - as you can see, it has a number of fields that we want to contact to fill out - but most are optional (as we don't want to make it a chore to subscribe to our list).
Email design example:
This is our email which is sent to the contact a few minutes after they have subscribed. It contains several components (or blocks) that contain our Conditional Content feature. This feature lets you change, or show / hide pictures and text based on specific contact information. In our case, the email shows a different number of gold stars (either none, 1, 2 or 3 stars) based on how much information they have provided.
The image from the top of our email were purchased a stock graphics website & customised - but your email doesn't need to be this fancy! You could show bronze, silver, gold & platinum photos (for the different levels of profile completeness) - or use star emojis, trophy emojis, a 'progress bar' graphic with various completeness levels filled in... or even badge icons of different designs, shapes & colours, etc. The second part of the image (which contains the contacts' first name) is dynamically generated using our Nifty Images integration.
The email that sends if the contact has an incomplete profile:
Either zero, 1 or 2 gold stars are shown in the top image, based on how many fields they have filled in at the time of subscribing. None of the optional fields completed by the user = 0 stars, 1 optional field completed by the user = 1 star, and so on. The button, and text link, both take the contact to an Update Profile form where they can complete the missing information.
The same email, but with the 'complete profile' variation visible:
This variation of the email will display 3 gold stars (as well as different message body text & no call to action button), as the contact did complete all optional fields at the time of subscribing.
How-to Guide
Part 1: Create a List
Skip this section if you already have a contact list you wish to use.
- Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
- Select
- Click the button under Blank List to create a new blank list.
- When done, click the 'X' to close the pop-up dialog.
- Click next to the list you just created.
- Select Rename.
- Give your list a name (for our example we'll simply call it 'XYZ Customers' - as it's where we'll store all of our customers).
Part 2: Customise the Subscribe Form & Create Additional Fields
For our example, we're going to monitor 3 fields for completion. You can add more, but note that you will need to add more steps to your automation - and you will need to adjust some of the numbering used in this how-to guide.
- Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
- Locate the list you're using for this campaign. Double-click on it to open into Forms view. The system should default to the Subscribe form - which will have a field for Email & Mobile phone on it already.
If you don't need the Mobile Phone field on you form, you can click the 👁️ icon next to the field name (on the right hand side), which removes it from the form. - Over on the right, click
You can use our form example above for ideas and inspiration. As you can see, we have fields for 'First name', 'State', 'Interests' - and email preferences (we're going to use these last 3 as part of our gamification strategy). Remember, the point of this is to ask the contact for more information - but to make it optional. That way, there are no barriers to sign-up. If a contact doesn't provide all of the information, that's totally okay - because the automation we're building soon is going to help us try and get more information from them using a gamified process.
to add your additional fields. Create a field for each piece of information you would like to collect from your list subscribers - but we recommend keeping this to 4 or 5 max (including the email address field, which will already have been created for you). - Once you've created all of your own fields, we'll need to create one to track how complete a contacts' profile is. Click
- Click .
- Give your field a name. In our case, we'll call it Profile completion.
- Click .
- The field will automatically add itself to the form - but we don't actually need it on there, so click the 👁️ icon next to the field name (on the right hand side), to remove it from the form.
- Optionally customise the appearance of your new form - you can add a logo, change the colours, field order and so on.
- When done, click .
- Next, flick over to the Update Profile form. This is the form we'll drive the contact to if they don't provide you with the info you're after and they decide to click through from your email.
- Ensure this form contains the same fields (in our case, 'First name', 'State', 'Interests' - and email preferences) - thus allowing the contact to give us the additional information if required. Again, we'd recommend not making all fields mandatory.
If the form doesn't have the field(s) you need, you can click the 👁️ icon next to the field name (on the right hand side), to add it to the form. The fields should already exist, since you created them above in step 3! - Be sure to set this form so that it skips the login screen.
- Optionally customise the appearance of the Update Profile form - you can add a logo, change the colours, field order and so on.
Part 3: Building the Email
So far, we have our list and the relevant fields we need for data capture. Next, we're going to build the email that sends whenever someone subscribes to the list.
- Select Messages from the sidebar.
- Create a new email message (or copy an existing one if you have an existing design you'd like to use).
- Start by entering (or pasting) the text you'd like contacts to see if / when they have a 'complete' profile. In other words, if they've provided all of the information you requested. You can also add an image to this text if you wish - such as a gold star, or a trophy ...anything you like really, in order to signify that the user has provided the information you wanted them to, even though much of it was optional. Remember - you can view our email examples towards the top of this guide to see how we've set out the wording.
- Next, we want to make a version of the text for those that haven't provided all of the information to us. To do this, we're going to use our Conditional Content to this text block, so that a different set of text appears when the profile is not complete. To do so, click on the text component once to select (highlight) it, then open the Conditions panel to the right hand side of the screen.
- Click .
- Set the conditions under which the text / imagery in the selected component should change. As you may remember, in our example, we're going to be asking the contact to supply 3 pieces of optional information - so for us, our condition will be configured as follows:
- With the condition set, you can now alter the text and / or imagery to suit what should be displayed when the contacts' profile is incomplete. Again, we welcome you to view our email examples towards the top of this guide to see how we've set out the wording.
- If required, repeat steps 3 to 7 (above) for any other parts of the email you wish to dynamically change. For example, you may want to put a banner image at the top of your email and have it change depending on how complete a profile is.
Our Conditional Content function lets to you add more than one condition to a component within your email. This means you could have a completely different banner appear for your contacts, depending on how many pieces of optional information they completed on your form. This is how we achieved the 'gold stars' effect in our email sample; these are just four different images (0 stars, 1 star, 2 stars and 3 stars) - and Conditional Content is displaying the correct one, based on the 'Profile completion' value being either 0, 1, 2 or 3. - Next, add a button and / or text link to your email, and link it to your Update Profile form. This will allow the contact to provide additional information.
- Make any other edits or customisations to your email as needed. When done, Save it.
You may like to save it into an 'Automations' (or similarly named) folder, so you and your colleagues know what it's for.
Part 4: Building the Automation
Good job so far! Next, we'll build the automation that logs how much information the contact provides and sends the welcome email you just built.
- Select Automation from the sidebar.
- Select the Advanced Automation tab.
- Click .
- Give the workflow a name and click . We've named ours 'Gamified profile completion'.
- Click .
- In the first section, set the action as A trigger against the following List and select the list you created at the start of this how-to guide.
- In the second section, set the trigger as Subscribe.
- Also in the second section in the Filter your Contacts area, click . The filtering dialog will appear.
- You may remember that in our particular example, the fields we're going to monitor (to see if they contain data) are 'State', 'Interests' - and email preferences. Let's start by checking if the 'State' field contains any data. So in our case, we're going to select the State field in the first dropdown, Is Empty in the second dropdown - and No in the third dropdown - as shown below. Essentially, we're asking the system to find people that subscribe and DO fill in our 'State' field.
- Click to close the filtering dialog.
- In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click . A popup dialog will open.
- In the first dropdown, select your Profile completion number field. In the second dropdown, select increment by and in the third, enter 1.
- Click to close the popup dialog.
- In the fourth section, set the timing to Immediately.
- Click to save and close your work so far. You'll be taken back to the automation workflow screen.
- Optionally hover your mouse over the newly created automation step and click the pencil icon to edit the title, as shown. In our example, we named it as follows: Increment 'Profile Completion' field by 1 when field 'State' completed.
- Let's create the next automation step. Click at the top right.
- Just like before, in the first section, set the action as A trigger against the following List and select the list you created at the start of this how-to guide.
- Again, in the second section, set the trigger as Subscribe.
- Also in the second section in the Filter your Contacts area, click . The filtering dialog will appear.
- In our example, the next field we're going to monitor for data is the 'email preferences' field. Note that this isn't a field we've made - rather, it's using the email preferences function built into our system. So in our case, we're going to select the Preferences field in the first dropdown, Includes any in the second dropdown - and in the third spot we'll tick the email preferences that we want to check to see if the contact has chosen any of these options.
- Click to close the filtering dialog.
- In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click . A popup dialog will open.
- In the first dropdown, select your Profile completion number field. In the second dropdown, select increment by and in the third, enter 1.
- Click to close the popup dialog.
- In the fourth section, set the timing to Immediately.
- Click to save and close your work so far. You'll be taken back to the automation workflow screen.
- Optionally hover your mouse over the newly created automation step and click the pencil icon to edit the title, as shown. In our example, we named it as follows: Increment 'Profile Completion' field by 1 when field 'Email Preferences' completed.
- Nearly there! Let's make the third automation step. Click at the top right to make the third step.
- Just like before, in the first section, set the action as A trigger against the following List and select the list you created at the start of this how-to guide.
- Again, in the second section, set the trigger as Subscribe.
- Also in the second section in the Filter your Contacts area, click . The filtering dialog will appear.
- Again referring back to our example, the third and final field we're going to be checking for data is our 'Interests' field. So in our case, we're going to select the Interests field in the first dropdown, Is Empty in the second dropdown - and No in the third dropdown - as shown below. Essentially, we're asking the system to find people that subscribe and DO fill in our 'Interests' field.
- Click to close the filtering dialog.
- In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click . A popup dialog will open.
- In the first dropdown, select your Profile completion number field. In the second dropdown, select increment by and in the third, enter 1.
- Click to close the popup dialog.
- In the fourth section, set the timing to Immediately.
- Click to save and close your work so far. You'll be taken back to the automation workflow screen.
- Optionally hover your mouse over the newly created automation step and click the pencil icon to edit the title, as shown. In our example, we named it as follows: Increment 'Profile Completion' field by 1 when field 'Interests' completed.
- Great work! So far, we're created the three automation steps that check for the presence of data in certain fields... but there's one step left; sending the 'Thanks for subscribing' email that 'ranks' te contact based on the completeness of their profile. Click at the top right.
- Just like before, in the first section, set the action as A trigger against the following List and select the list you created at the start of this how-to guide.
- Again, in the second section, set the trigger as Subscribe.
- In the third section, enable the Send the contact the message tick box, and select your email message from the dropdown provided. This is the email message that you created in Part 3 of this guide.
- In the fourth section, set the timing to A period of time after the trigger occurs & make it 3 minutes. This gives the other automation steps time to run.
- Click to save and close your work so far. You'll be taken back to the automation workflow screen.
- Optionally hover your mouse over the newly created automation step and click the pencil icon to edit the title, as shown. In our example, we named it as follows: Send 'thanks for subscribing' email. Our automation workflow now looks as follows:
- Click at the top right.
Part 5: Activate Your Automation
- Select Automation from the sidebar.
- Select the Advanced Automation tab.
- Finally, click the ellipsis ( ) next to the automation and choose Activate.
Part 6: Test It!
- Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
- Double-click on your list, to enter Forms view. Your subscribe form should open by default.
- Click View Form near the top right. Your form will open in a pop-up window.
- Enter your email address and fill in, then submit, your form.
You may opt to leave one of the fields blank, so you can see the 'incomplete profile' email variation. - Wait a few minutes - then you should receive the email.
If you want to see what the 'complete profile' email looks like, delete your contact record from the list and re-subscribe yourself by following the steps above. This time, complete all form fields.
Next Steps
When ready, you can begin to direct traffic to your new subscription form by sharing the link on social media, or embedding it onto your website.
Each time someone fills it your subscription form, the automation will run and it will send the gamification email - which will display a different 'star' rating and text based on how complete the contacts' profile is. Well done!