This article walks through the different parameters of the LiveTag and how to set them up in the LiveIntent platform.

Email Service Providers (ESPs) are platforms that allow businesses to send emails to their audiences. Despite each ESP having its own unique setup, LiveIntent is able to work seamlessly across different platforms because of LiveTag Parameters.

LiveTag Parameters are dynamic fields that will automatically fill in information when an email is opened by a user. The information that is provided in the LiveTag Parameters allows our ad decision algorithm to serve the right ad for the right user at the right time.

Below details each LiveTag Parameters’ purpose and best practices to set you up for success.

What is the LiveTag?

LiveTags are snippets of lightweight HTML code that are placed in email newsletter templates in order to enable ad serving. They only need to be added to email templates once and do not need to be modified with each send.

User Parameter

The User Parameter will populate an identifier for the user opening the email, and it is a requirement for LiveTag functionality. These are the available options for a User Parameter:

• Email: Populates a user’s email address.
  • Note: LiveIntent always hashes raw emails before they reach our servers.
• MD5: Populates the MD5 hash of a user’s email address.
• SHA-1: Populates the SHA-1 hash of a user’s email address.
• SHA-256: Populates the SHA-256 hash of a user’s email address.
• UU (Unique User): Populates an ESP-defined unique ID for each user.
  • Note: Using an UU will make your LiveTags eligible for direct sold and house purposes only. In order to utilize LiveIntent’s programmatic demand, an email hash is required.

What’s the best User Parameter to use?

We recommend using Email as the User Parameter. An email address gives LiveIntent the ability to have all three hash types (MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256), which increases our capability to leverage demand that is targeting specific hashes.

Since one hash type cannot be converted into other hash types, you could potentially miss out on demand if you use a hash type as the User Parameter. By passing one hash type (eg: MD5), you could be missing out on advertising demand targeting the other hash types (eg: SHA-1 and SHA-256).

If you use an email address as the User Parameter it’s important to note that LiveIntent always hashes email addresses into the hash types (noted above) before they are sent to our servers. No raw email address or Personally Identifiable Information (PII) are collected by LiveIntent.

Placement Parameter

The Placement Parameter plays a key role in email sends and is a requirement for LiveTag functionality. The Placement Parameter will populate a unique value for each email send or mailing. A unique placement parameter indicates to Predict, our ad decisioning algorithm, that this is a new send and ensures a new ad decision will be triggered.

Some common placement parameters are:

• A date stamp
• A campaign ID

Some examples of possible Placement Parameters from popular ESPs would be:

• Marigold Engage | Sailthru can use {date(‘MMddyy’)} to populate the date stamp of the email send’s date.
• Mailchimp uses *|CAMPAIGN_UID|* to generate a campaign ID per email message

Please make sure that the placement parameter has no reserved or unsafe characters including spaces, slashes, or periods when generated. If using a date stamp, we recommend the date stamp to be populated like MMDDYYYY or MM_DD_YYYY.

Reserved characters (characters that have another purpose in URL syntax) include the following:

: / ? # [ ] @ ! $ & ‘ ( ) * + , ; =

Unsafe characters (characters that can potentially cause breaks in a URL) include the following:

Includes the blank/empty space and ” < > % { } | \ ^ `

LCEE Parameter

The LiveConnect Email Extension (LCEE) parameter is a user identifier that connects a user from email to cookies on the web. We are requiring all new publishers to use LCEE, and are working through our existing publishers to add it in. This connection will securely identify more newsletter subscribers that DSPs can target, making your audience more valuable and increasing programmatic CPMs. To find out more, please visit LiveConnect Email Extension for Publishers, and please note LCEE requires a LiveConnect Tag on the publisher’s site.

Please note, this parameter is not only going to be in all LiveTags, but also on all clickable content to your site. This is the function that helps us connect a user’s email to when they click to the publisher’s content and go to their website.

The LCEE Parameter itself is usually a subscriber ID, contact ID, or a customized parameter that is set up in the ESP to represent a user.

Please check if your ESP is in our ESP specific LCEE instructions. If not, please see our general LCEE instructions.

List Parameter

The List Parameter is an optional parameter that populates an identifier for an email list. Within an ESP, an email list can also be known as a subscriber list or an audience.

The main use case for a List Parameter is to target an email list for a specific Direct Sold or House campaign. However, the best practice to achieve reliable audience targeting is to upload and target a Custom Audience in Audience Manager.

If you are planning to use Audience Manager or are not planning on targeting an email list in Direct or House campaigns, the entire key-value pair for List Parameter can be removed from your LiveTags.