Getting Started with Merge Tags

The information you collect through your Mailchimp signup form is saved in an audience field and tied to a unique label, called a merge tag. Use merge tags to insert personalized or dynamic content into your marketing emails or text messages.

In this article, you'll learn about merge tags and ways you can use them to customize your marketing content.

Definitions

If you're new to Mailchimp, take a few moments to review the terminology we use to discuss audiences and merge tags.

• Audience
  A collection of contacts, along with their profile details, preferences, and other data.
• Audience field
  A place where specific contact details are stored, like a cell in a spreadsheet.
• Merge tag
  A unique, text-based identifier that corresponds to account data, such as an audience field.
• Dynamic content
  The personalized or otherwise unique content that's inserted into an email or text message by a merge tag.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Merge tags are available to use in emails and some default forms and response emails. To see a live preview of your merge tags, toggle on the Enable live merge tag info slider in Preview Mode, or send a live email to a small test segment of your audience.
• If you have more than one Mailchimp audience, make sure you use the correct merge tags for your targeted audience.
• Merge tags are style sensitive. Check for extra bolding, italics, or other formatting around or inside your merge tags.
• SMS merge tags work the same way as email merge tags. To learn how to send SMS marketing, check out Create and Send a Marketing SMS.

How merge tags work

Your Mailchimp audience contains audience fields that refer to your contact's information. Each audience field corresponds to a unique merge tag, which looks like a snippet of text wrapped in special characters: *|EXAMPLE|*. When you insert a merge tag into your content, we'll replace the tag with the content stored in the corresponding audience field.

For example, you can use the *|EMAIL|* merge tag to display each subscribed contact's email address where the merge tag was placed.

Some merge tags use URLs to link to other content, such as text or images. When you link an image in your content with a merge tag, you'll use the hyperlink tool on the editor toolbar to add the merge tag in the linked URL. When your subscribed contacts click the linked image they'll be taken to the URL the merge tag refers to, such as an update profile page.

Merge tags can be used in any regular or automated email, text messages, and in the final "welcome" email in the form builder. Each time you send content that uses merge tags, we'll pull the most recent data to replace the merge tag.

Types of merge tags

Mailchimp offers two types of merge tags to help you include audience and contact content: system merge tags and audience merge tags.

• System merge tags typically refer to the data in your Mailchimp account. Use system merge tags to include social sharing links, RSS content, account information, or to translate your email. You can also use system merge tags to add unsubscribe, update profile, and forward links to your emails.
• Audience merge tags refer to the information stored in your audience, including contacts. Use audience field merge tags to pull your audience data into your emails, like the signup form URL, company name associated with the audience, or contact-specific information like email address or first and last name.

Use our cheat sheet as a quick reference for available Mailchimp merge tags: All the Merge Tags Cheat Sheet.

How to use merge tags

Merge tags are one way to insert dynamic content into your emails. Enter merge tags into your emails, or choose merge tags from the Merge Tags drop-down menu. You can also customize merge tags and set default values.

Enter a tag

When you enter a merge tag directly into your content, be sure to surround the label with the asterisk (*) and pipe (|) characters. If there's a typo in the merge tag, your subscribed contacts will see the mistyped text instead of their personalized content. You'll find the pipe key above the enter/return key on most U.S. keyboards.

Choose a tag in the toolbar

To avoid typos and syntax errors, insert a merge tag in a content block from the merge tag menu. Place your cursor where you want the merge tag to appear, and click the Merge Tags menu on the editor toolbar. Choose the merge tag you need, and that's it!

Customize default merge tags

Default audience merge tags look something like this: *|MERGE1|*. You can edit and customize these merge tags in your audience settings to give them a more descriptive name, such as *|BIRTHDAY|* or *|CITY|*. Be careful when you rename your audience merge tags, because our system uses certain reserved field names that can't be reused elsewhere.

Manage Audience and Signup Form Fields

Set default merge tag values

A merge tag works correctly only when there is data in the field it's associated with. For your most commonly used audience merge tags, be sure to input default values that will display if the contact profile doesn't have any data in a certain field.

For example, you could set the default value for the first name merge tag to "Friend." Then, when you use "Hello *|FNAME|*," subscribed contacts whose first names are not in your audience will see "Hello Friend."

If you don't set a default value and the subscribed contact doesn't have the data in their profile, they'll see a blank space where the contact-specific content was supposed to appear.

Set Default Merge Tag Values for an Audience

Testing and troubleshooting

You should always preview and test your merge tags before your marketing content is sent. Here are some things to know about testing merge tags in Mailchimp.

• Merge tags connected to audience fields are contact-specific, meaning they won’t populate in a test send (even if the test email address or phone number is the email address or phone number of a contact in your audience).
• Merge tags don't preview in the email template builder. To test these merge tags, create an email from the saved template and use our preview and test tools.
• If you use merge tags in your signup forms and response emails, sign up through your form and review how the merge tags appear in each step of the process.
• If merge tags aren't working the way you expect, check out our troubleshooting guide.

Preview and Test Your Emails
Create and Send a Marketing SMS