ampscript

Ampscript is a proprietary scripting language used within Salesforce Marketing Cloud to create dynamic, personalized content in emails, landing pages, and other Marketing Cloud destinations. It runs on the server as part of the message or page rendering process, allowing subscribers’ data from profile attributes, data extensions, and context to influence what the recipient sees. Ampscript can be embedded in HTML content blocks through inline code or script blocks.

Developed as a tool for marketers and developers, Ampscript integrates with Marketing Cloud features such as Data Extensions, subscriber attributes, and content blocks. It enables conditional logic, data lookups, string manipulation, and date handling, enabling tailored offers, greetings, and product recommendations. It supports both simple personalizations and more complex content generation based on multiple data sources.

Key constructs include variables, assignment statements, and control flow using IF/ELSE, and looping constructs for repetitive content. Functions support data lookup (Lookup, LookupRows, Row, RowCount), data retrieval from data extensions, as well as string operations (Concat, Substring, Replace), and date/time operations. Outputs are inserted with dedicated output syntax, and errors can be managed with error-handling functions to ensure graceful fallbacks.

Example:

%%[

SET @firstName = AttributeValue("FirstName")

IF EMPTY(@firstName) THEN

SET @firstName = "Customer"

ENDIF

]%%

Hello %%=v(@firstName)=%%, welcome to our newsletter.

Ampscript is most commonly used within Email Studio, CloudPages, and other Marketing Cloud locations. While powerful, it can be challenging to test outside the platform, and debugging typically relies on test sends, logs, and careful handling of data lookups to avoid unintended disclosures or performance issues.