Category: Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Did you know you can use regular expressions in AMPscript?

You can.

Here are some RegExMatch() snippets that I’ve used:

Variables

@s = input string
@p = pattern
@m = match
@o = output

Sample Code

Output

Strip leading zeroes from a string
input: 0000012345
pattern: “^0*(\d+)$”
output: 12345

Check for all digits, no match
input: 12345x
pattern: “^\d*$”
output:

Check for all digits, match
input: 12345
pattern: “^\d*$”
output: 12345

Replace parenthetical text with space
input: whee (whatever it is) whoop
pattern: “\s(.+)\s”
match: (whatever it is)
replaced: whee whoop

For further reading

RegExMatch() function
Concat() function
OutputLine() function
RegEx pattern reference
RegEx options reference

Here is a good way to display a grid of external content in an email without repeating a significant amount of AMPscript. It utilizes an XML string and uses XPATH to retrieve content using the BuildRowSetFromXML() function.

Slide deck from my ExactTarget Connections Conference 2014 presentation

Helpful Links/Resources

Double Wide v2 – Responsive Email Pattern
XPATH reference
All AMPscript Functions
LookupOrderedRows() Function
BuildRowsetFromXML() Function
TreatAsContent() Function
ContentAreaByName() Function

Product Data Extension

SKU	ProductImageURL	AvgCustomerRating	ApprovedForEmail
1234	http://placehold.it/150x150&text=1234	4	true
2468	http://placehold.it/150x150&text=2468	3	true
1357	http://placehold.it/150x150&text=1357	5	true

Email Init Section

Email Body

Content Area Init Section

Content Area Body

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Data Extensions in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform are simply database tables in which you can store data you need for your campaigns.

You can add rows to data extensions using:

• Imports
• Queries
• API

With the API, you have a few options — SOAP being the most complex, AMPscript the simplest:

• SOAP
• Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS)
• AMPscript

You can use AMPscript in emails, landing pages or SMS keyword configurations. I’ll use AMPscript in this example.

Here’s how you add or update a single row in a data extension named My_Test_DataExtension using the UpsertDE() function:

Here’s a breakdown of the UpsertDE() arguments in this example:

1. The name of the data extension to receive the data
2. Number of columns you’re using to check to see if there’s a matching row already in the data extension. (This means there will be only 1 pair of name and value arguments following this parameter.  You could specify more.)
3. The lookup column
4. The lookup value
5. Column 1 to update
6. Column 1 update value
7. Column 2 to update
8. Column 2 update value

For further reading:
UpdateDE()
AMPscript Functions
UpsertData() (for SMS keywords)
UpdateData() (for SMS keywords)