Setting up Locales

Want an easy way to manage your localized content? With Iterable's locales feature, you can take advantage of shared templates while also enabling your marketing teams to work on content for multiple regions and languages. (Now that's what we call having your cake and eating it too! 🍰)

Before you can start creating multiple locale versions of a template, you'll need to set up the locales you want to use on your Project Settings page.

# Setting up the locale user profile field

Iterable uses a field called locale to match each user's location and language preferences to the right localized version of a template. If you name this field something else (like languagePreference), Iterable won't be able to send the right template to each of your users. Talk to your Iterable customer success manager to make sure you have this set up correctly.

# Creating a new locale

Click the Add Locale button on your Project Settings page to set up a new locale or locales. You can enter the names of the locales you want to use in the text box that appears. Separate multiple locales with commas.

# Naming locales

We recommend using standard ISO codes to name your locales. Creating two- or four-letter locale codes with the ISO-639 language codes and ISO-3166 country codes works well for many Iterable customers. But Iterable also supports alternative locale naming conventions like three-letter codes — the important thing to remember is that the locale codes you set up in your project settings map to what your customers will have in the locale field on their user profile!

As you're deciding what to call your locales, make sure to consider not just what your business looks like right now, but also how it may grow in the future. Maybe you only serve one region/language right now, but what happens if you expand globally in the next few years? For example, let's say you currently only operate in Canada, and you want to localize your content for English and French speakers. You might create two locales and call them en (English) and fr (French).

But what happens if your business expands to Europe next year? Not only are the dialects of English and French different between North America and Europe, but so are privacy laws and regulations. How will you distinguish between the French-language templates you've localized for North America and Europe if you only have one French locale called fr?

If you operate in more than one region (or think you may in the future), you might want to give your locales four-character names like this:

• French (Canada): fr-CA
• French (France): fr-FR

By denoting both the language and country, you'll be able to create more tailored content that accounts for different regional dialects and country-specific privacy laws and regulations. (For example, your brand's terms of service may need to be translated into more than one language as well as worded differently according to geographic region.)

# Mapping locale codes to languages

Once you've named a locale, select a supported language to associate with it. This is how Iterable supports sending locale variants of templates via third-party channels like WhatsApp.

For example, for the locale code en-GB, select English (GB).

# Choosing a default locale for your project

Your project's default locale should be the locale you use the most. Each time you create a new template, it will be associated with your project's default locale. If you have multiple localized versions of a template, Iterable will display the version for your project's default locale on your Campaigns page.

Your default locale is also used as a fallback when a user's location and/or language preference is unknown. When a user has no locale field on their user profile at send time, Iterable sends them the default localization of the campaign.

The first time you create a locale, Iterable will automatically assign it to be your project's default locale. If you want to change this, it's a good idea to do so when you're first setting up your project, as changing your default locale affects previously-built campaigns.

To set a different default locale for your project, click the three-dot overflow menu next to the locale you want to set as the default and click Set Default.

# Setting default locales on a per-template basis

If you and your team want the ability to adjust each template's default locale, turn on the setting, Set a Locale Default on a Per-template Basis. When this setting is on, you can specify a default locale each time you create or edit a template in your project. To learn more, see Creating Content in Multiple Languages.

# Handling unsupported user locales

Sometimes a user's locale won't match any of the locales you've set up for your template or project.

In the Locale Preferences section of your Project Settings page, you can specify for Iterable to skip marketing and transactional messages to users when the locale field on their user profile doesn't match any of the locales you've set up for a campaign, or to send them the default locale version of the campaign.

# Deleting a locale

Locales can't be edited or renamed once they've been created. If you need to make changes to a locale, you'll need to delete it and create a new one.

You can delete locales from your Project Settings page. Find the locale you want to delete, click on the three-dot overflow menu, and click the trash can icon that appears.

When you delete a locale, you will no longer see the versions associated with that locale in your templates and campaigns. The content isn't deleted, but the locale won't show up in the template editor, and Iterable won't use this locale when it sends a campaign. Depending on your Locale Preferences, the next time you send a campaign, customers who have a deleted locale on their user profile will either not receive the campaign or will receive the version of the campaign that corresponds to your project or template's default locale.