How to use Personalization String within Journey Builder using Salesforce Data

Question

I have created a Journey where the entry event is a Salesforce Data extension and a contact is injected into it when he creates a new record in an object named Application. When it happens, the information regarding the percent completed of the application is saved in the Journey Data Extension and, after a specific date, the system sends an email with this information (using personalization string).

My issue is that I need to map Contact Data and not Journey Data because at the begining, the percent complete is 0%, but when the email is sent the percent complete may be 50% (as an example) and I need this data updated.

How I should change the personalization string in order to map Contact Data instead Journey Data?

Answer 1

Option 1: You could retrieve the current value from the synchronized data extensions via AMPscript using the Lookup-function. As a prerequisite you need to have the desired object configured to sync to Marketing Cloud.

Instead of the personalization string you would use a line similar to this:

%%=Lookup('NameOfYourSyncDE','FieldYouLikeToQuery','Id', @VariableContainingTheRecordId)=%%

Option 2: An alternative way is to directly query the record in Sales Cloud using the RetrieveSalesforceObjects-function.

%%[
  VAR @rs, @row, @value
  SET @rs = RetrieveSalesforceObjects('NameOfYourSFDCObject', 'Id,FieldYouLikeToQuery', 'Id', '=', @VariableContainingTheRecordId)
  IF RowCount(@rs) == 1 THEN
    SET @row = Row(@rs, 1)
    SET @value = Field(@row, 'FieldYouLikeToQuery')
  ELSE
    SET @value = 'Fallbackvalue'
  ENDIF
]%%

The above snippet retrieves a value from Sales/Service Cloud and writes it to the variable @value. In order to write it to the email, you need to use the following snippet:

%%=v(@value)=%%

For both options you'd use the Salesforce Record-ID as identifier. Note, that for option 1 there is a delay as synchronization can only appear once every 15 minutes (or even longer intervals, depending on the data source configuration).

Related documentation:

• Lookup-function
• RetrieveSalesforceObjects-function
• RowCount-function
• Row-function
• Field-function