Using variable tags in Constant Contact email, landing page, and SMS editors

[user9640528]

How can I keep a full dynamic variable field within a custom field on a contact that contains special characters such as &. Seems when it pulls through, and it hits the first & in the string, it stops. I am using this variable field to finalize a web page link on a campaign.

[William_A]

Hello @user9640528 ,

Are you using the ampersand to include multiple variables in your link? Or is the ampersand purely an element of the field?

If it's the latter, then your contacts' custom field data will need to be changed to the actual word "and," as including a symbol like an ampersand is going to treat it like actual coding for multiple variables. 

[user9640528]

Hi William, the ampersand is part of multiple variables in the link. i.e., webpage = www.webpage.com/123456&firstname=Danny&lastname=Smith&weblink=www.website.com the variable part in the contact would be 123456&firstname=Danny&lastname=Smith&weblink=www.website.com 

[William_A]

Hello @user9640528 ,

After speaking with the higher level technical team, they're recommending encoding the ampersand instead, so you'd set the URL up to look more like this:

https://www.webpage.com/123456%26firstname=[[firstName]]%26lastname=[[lastName]]%26weblink=[[custom.webpage]]

They're looking further into the issues you were experiencing with just using the ampersand, and will make note to address the experience and workarounds if needed.

[user9640528]

Hi William, thank you for providing that recommendation. I was able to modify my link to pull through the other variable fields to build back up the link and this was successful. I would only add that in building the url, in lieu of %26, I used the ampersand, and it was accepted in this format. It only has issues with the ampersand when the ampersand is part of the variable field.