Set Default Merge Values for an Audience

When you use merge tags to personalize your campaign, it's a good idea to set default values to display for recipients who don't have any data for that field. For example, you could set the default value for your first name tag to "Friend." When you use "Hello *|FNAME|*," in a campaign, subscribers whose first names are not in the system will see "Hello Friend."

In this article, you'll learn two ways to set default values for your audience fields.

From the audience settings

To set the default merge tag values from the audience settings, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Audience dashboard.
   
3. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
4. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Settings.
5. In the Settings section, click Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags.
6. In the fields in the Default value column, type the default values for your merge tags.
   
7. When you're done, click Save Changes.

Default merge tag values are available for all fields except the required Email Address field and the Address (physical) field. From this page, you can also add new audience fields, edit field labels and tag names, set required fields, and choose whether to hide or display the field in your signup forms. To delete a field, click the trashcan icon to the right of the Default value field.

From the form builder

To set the default merge tag values from inside the form builder, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Audience dashboard.
   
3. Click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
4. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Signup forms.
5. Scroll to the Form builder tile, then click Manage forms.
   
6. On the Build it tab, either create a new field or click on an existing field to edit.
7. On the field settings tab, type in the default merge tag value field the text you want to appear when a subscriber's data is not available, and then click Save Field.
   

From the form builder, you can also add new fields, edit field labels, tag names, set required fields, and choose whether to hide or display the field in your signup forms.

Default merge tag values are available for all fields except the required Email Address field and the Address (physical) field. Also, default merge tag values for image fields will only display text.

Default merge tag values will only display in campaigns, and not in your audience fields.