Working with E-mail Templates

The e-mail builder tool lets you go beyond static newsletters by pulling in live data about your customers, their subscriptions, and their orders, and by showing or hiding content based on who’s reading it. This guide walks you through the three building blocks you’ll use to do that: variables, visibility conditions, and tracking, plus a full reference of the objects available to you.

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1. Using Variables

Variables let you insert dynamic content into your e-mail, like a customer’s name or an order total, instead of typing it out by hand. You’ll find them available directly in the e-mail builder tool.

Variables are available in any environment where you send e-mails, including Automations and Social Posts. Automations have access to a larger set of variables, since they’re triggered by specific events (like a form submission or a failed payment) that carry extra context with them.

Some variables are marked as objects below. An object gives you direct, low-level access to all the properties of that record, similar to what you’d get back from the API. Our support team can advise you on using these if you need something more advanced than the flat variables listed below.

Which variables are available depends on the trigger

• Content triggers — when a trigger relates to a specific article:

  • article_id — Article ID / Content ID

• Customer triggers — available on any trigger with a customer attached, including payment triggers:

  • visitor_id
  • EMAIL
  • FULL_NAME
  • FIRST_NAME
  • LAST_NAME
  • customer
  • code (only on the Forgot your password and Email activation request triggers)

• Payment triggers — available on any trigger with a payment attached, including subscription triggers:

  • AMOUNT
  • CURRENCY
  • visitor_id
  • subscription_id (if the payment is tied to a subscription)
  • order_id
  • order
  • cart (deprecated)
  • price_matrix['subtotal']
  • price_matrix['shipping']
  • price_matrix['tax']
  • price_matrix['discount']
  • price_matrix['total']

• Subscription triggers — available on any trigger with a subscription attached:

  • subscription_id
  • visitor_id
  • subscription

• Form triggers — available on triggers related to a form submission:

  • form
  • form_id
  • submission_id
  • form.response — the submitted answers, mapped to the alphanumeric keys defined in your form, e.g. form.response.name and form.response.email

• E-mail list triggers:

  • channel_id — ID of the Social Channel
  • channel_post_id — available when a Social Post is opened or read

• Forgot your password / Email activation request triggers:

  • code — the activation code to send along with your API call

• Nightly renewal triggers:

  • logs — a JSON-encoded array of log messages
  • total — total subscriptions found for renewal
  • success — total subscriptions renewed without errors

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2. Setting Visibility Conditions

Sometimes you only want a piece of content to show up for certain readers, for example a renewal reminder that should only appear for customers without an active subscription. Visibility conditions let you do exactly that: they decide whether a Container or Columns block gets shown to a given customer. If the condition isn’t met, the block is left out of the e-mail entirely — it won’t appear in the e-mail’s source at all.

How to set one

1. Select the Container or Columns block you want to control in the e-mail builder.
2. Find the Visibility condition field in its settings.
3. Write your condition using Smarty-style scripting, prefixing any variable with a dollar sign $.

Examples

1. Show a block only to customers with an active subscription: $customer.subscriptions|count gt 0

2. Show a block only to customers located in South Africa: $customer.country_code eq "ZA"

3. Show a block only to customers who have a profile picture set: $customer.photo neq ''

If you get stuck writing a condition, our support team is happy to help.

Modifiers

Modifiers are Smarty functions you can apply to a variable by adding a | after it, for example variable|count. The two you’ll use most often are:

• count
• empty

Operators

Use these Smarty operators to compare values in your condition:

Operator	Meaning
eq	Equal to
neq	Not equal to
gt	Greater than
lt	Less than
gte	Greater than or equal to
lte	Less than or equal to

To invert any expression, prefix it with !. For example, !($customer.active) is true when the customer is not active.

Functions

You can also use functions to check conditions inside arrays or to evaluate a customer’s subscription state.

in_array

in_array(16, $customer.tags) is true if the customer has the tag with ID 16 attached to them.

C:: helper functions

The C:: namespace gives you a set of built-in helpers for common subscription and channel checks, so you don’t have to write out the underlying logic yourself.

Most of these take a group_name argument, which accepts either a single quoted string ('premium') or an array of strings (['basic', 'premium']) if you want to match against any of several groups. The channel_id argument always takes a single quoted string. As with any condition, you can prefix these with ! to invert them.

Function	Description
C::hasActiveSubscription($customer, 'group_name')	True if the customer has an active subscription in the given group.
C::getActiveSubscriptionPrice($customer, 'group_name') gt 0	True if the customer’s active subscription price in the given group is greater than 0. Replace gt 0 with any comparison to check a specific price.
C::neverSubscribed($customer, 'group_name')	True if the customer has never held a subscription in the given group.
C::hasRetryingSubscription($customer, 'group_name')	True if the customer has a subscription in the given group that is currently in a payment retry cycle.
C::hasExpiredNotRetryingSubscription($customer, 'group_name')	True if the customer has a subscription in the given group that has expired and is no longer retrying payment.
C::cardExpiringThisMonth($customer)	True if the customer’s payment card expires in the current month.
C::subscribedToChannel($customer, 'channel_id')	True if the customer is subscribed to the given channel.
C::hasTag($customer, 'tag_id')	True if the customer has the given tag assigned to them.

Examples

• Show a block only to customers without an active subscription in the “premium” group: !C::hasActiveSubscription($customer, 'premium')

• Show a block only to customers whose card is expiring this month: C::cardExpiringThisMonth($customer)

• Show a block only to customers who have never subscribed to the “basic” group: C::neverSubscribed($customer, 'basic')

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3. Tracking

Every e-mail you send comes with tracking built in, so you can measure opens and clicks without any extra setup.

• Opens are tracked automatically using an open tracking pixel embedded in every e-mail.
• Clicks are tracked automatically too: every link in your e-mail gets tracking parameters appended to it —
  • utm_campaign=Post-{post_id}
  • utm_medium=email
  • utm_source=CMS-{channel_id}

You’ll find this data both in Google Analytics and in the CMS’s own analytics, so you can see how a given e-mail performed in either place.

Customizing the tracking source

By default, utm_source is set to CMS-{channel_id}. If you’d rather use a more readable or campaign-specific name, you can override it with a custom string. Go to Administration → Publisher Configuration → Social Channels and update the channel’s settings.

Excluding a link from tracking

Sometimes you don’t want a link rewritten with tracking parameters, for instance if it’s a deep link that needs to open directly inside a mobile app. In that case, add ?no_redirect=true to the link and it will be left untouched. Note that this will also prevent the system from knowing whether the link was clicked.

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4. Object Reference

The variables marked as objects above (customer, order, subscription, form, and item) give you access to far more detail than the flat variables alone. The structure of each object mirrors what you’d get back from the API, so if you’re already familiar with our API responses, this will look familiar.

For any array property, you can apply the modifiers described above, for example customer.tags|count.

Customer object

Identity

Property	Type	Notes
customer.id	int	Unique customer ID
customer.loginName	string	Login e-mail address
customer.displayName	string	Full display name
customer.photo	string	Profile picture URL; empty string when not set
customer.accountType	int	0 = social/passwordless account, 1 = has credentials
customer.user_type	string	e.g. subscriber
customer.active	int	1 when the account is active
customer.clientId	int	Internal client identifier
customer.source	string	Acquisition source, e.g. organic

Location & profile

Property	Type	Notes
customer.country_code	string	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, e.g. NL
customer.country	string	Country name
customer.city	string	City name
customer.mobile	string	Mobile number in international format
customer.preferredLanguage	string	BCP 47 language tag, e.g. en
customer.dateOfBirth	int	Unix timestamp
customer.lastLogin	int	Unix timestamp of last login
customer.lastLoginCountry	int	Country ID at last login

Dates & cohorts

Property	Type	Notes
customer.creationDate	int	Account creation date as Unix timestamp
customer.creationDay	string	Day and month of creation in DDMM format, e.g. 0101
customer.registeredSinceCohort	string	Cohort bucket based on account age: M0, M1-3, M3-6, M6-12, Y1 – Y10+
customer.payment_expiry	int	Unix timestamp of the latest payment expiry
customer.maxExpiry	int	Unix timestamp of the furthest future subscription expiry
customer.minActivation	int	Unix timestamp of the earliest subscription activation
customer.totalSubscriptionDays	int	Cumulative active subscription days (rounded up)
customer.archiveCredits	int	Number of remaining archive credits

Preferences

Property	Type	Notes
customer.preferences	object	Full preferences object
customer.preferences.optout_marketing	string	"1" if opted out of marketing, "0" otherwise
customer.preferences.optout_marketing_date	int	Unix timestamp when the opt-out was recorded; 0 if not set
customer.preferences.country_code	string	Country code stored in preferences

Address

Property	Type	Notes
customer.address.street	string	Street and house number
customer.address.city	string	City
customer.address.postalCode	string	Postal / ZIP code
customer.address.country	string	ISO country code

Custom properties

Property	Type	Notes
customer.properties	object	Key-value pairs of custom fields set on the account

Payment

Property	Type	Notes
customer.payment	object	Latest payment; may be absent if no payments exist
customer.payment.id	int	Payment ID
customer.payment.status	string	e.g. completed
customer.payment.price	string	Amount as a decimal string
customer.payment.currency	string	ISO 4217 currency code, e.g. EUR
customer.payment.price_baseCurrency	string	Amount in the account’s base currency
customer.payment_tokens	object	Stored payment tokens keyed by provider name (e.g. stripe); only present when a token is on file
customer.payment_tokens.{provider}.token	string	Provider token
customer.payment_tokens.{provider}.guid	string	Internal GUID
customer.payment_tokens.{provider}.expiry	string	Card expiry date
customer.payment_tokens.{provider}.lastdigits	string	Last 4 digits of the card
customer.payment_tokens.{provider}.payment_method	string	e.g. card

Tags & segments

Property	Type	Notes
customer.tags	int[]	Array of tag IDs assigned to the customer
customer.tags[n]	int	ID of a single tag

Subscriptions

Property	Type	Notes
customer.subscriptions	array	All subscriptions on the account
customer.subscriptions[n].id	int	Subscription ID
customer.subscriptions[n].activationDate	int	Unix timestamp
customer.subscriptions[n].deactivationDate	int	Unix timestamp; 0 if still active
customer.subscriptions[n].status	int	1 = active
customer.subscriptions[n].product	int	Product ID
customer.subscriptions[n].group	string	Subscription group name
customer.subscriptions[n].paymentMethod	string	e.g. stripe
customer.subscriptions[n].nextRenewal	int	Unix timestamp of next renewal
customer.subscriptions[n].cancellationRequestDate	int	Unix timestamp; 0 if no cancellation requested

Channels

Property	Type	Notes
customer.channels	int[]	IDs of channels the customer is subscribed to
customer.channels_optout	int[]	IDs of channels where the customer has opted out or is inactive
customer.channels_timestamps_cohort	object	Cohort string keyed by channel ID indicating when the customer subscribed, e.g. { "1": "Y1" }
customer.channels_details	array	Detailed subscription info per channel
customer.channels_details[n].channelId	int	Channel ID
customer.channels_details[n].optout	int	1 if opted out
customer.channels_details[n].active	int	1 if active
customer.channels_details[n].timestamp	int	Unix timestamp of subscription
customer.channels_details[n].optout_timestamp	int	Unix timestamp of opt-out; 0 if not opted out

Engagement

Property	Type	Notes
customer.read_posts	int[]	IDs of posts the customer has opened
customer.click_posts	int[]	IDs of posts the customer has clicked
customer.read_time	object	Unix timestamp of last open per channel ID, e.g. { "1": 1718700000 }
customer.click_time	object	Unix timestamp of last click per channel ID

Order object

• order.id
• order.price
• order.status
• order.responseMessage
• order.lastUpdate
• order.timestamp
• order.userId
• order.paymentMethod
• order.cart (deprecated)
• order.price_matrix
• order.price_matrix.subtotal
• order.price_matrix.tax
• order.price_matrix.discount
• order.price_matrix.shipping
• order.price_matrix.total
• order.items_details (array)
• order.items_details[n].item
• order.items_details[n].price
• order.items_details[n].quantity
• order.items_details[n].item.description
• order.shippingStatus
• order.authorization
• order.address
• order.shipping_address
• order.shipping_price
• order.tax_price

Item object

Inside a Container or Columns block whose data source is set to Product Items, you can use the following variables:

• item.price
• item.quantity
• item.item.description

Subscription object

• subscription.id
• subscription.activationDate
• subscription.deactivationDate
• subscription.status
• subscription.product
• subscription.product.description
• subscription.purchased_item
• subscription.purchased_item.name
• subscription.nextRenewal
• subscription.lastFailedOrder
• subscription.attempts
• subscription.referenceOrderId
• subscription.group
• subscription.group_name
• subscription.paymentMethod

Form object

Available for automations linked to a form submission.

Property	Type	Notes
form.id	int	Unique form ID
form.name	string	Form name
form.fields	array	Field definitions for the form
form.captcha_enabled	bool	Whether CAPTCHA is enabled on the form
form.allow_anonymous	bool	Whether anonymous submissions are permitted
form.response	object	Key-value pairs mapping each field’s alphanumeric key to the answer provided by the user

form.response contains one entry per form field, keyed by the field’s alphanumeric identifier. For example, if your form has fields with keys name and email, you’d reference them as form.response.name and form.response.email.

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If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out to the support team for help.