Use Merge Tags to Send Personalized Files

Send personalized files for each contact using custom merge tags in your email. You’ll insert URLs into a Mailchimp audience field and use that field's merge tag in your campaign.

In this article, you'll learn how to set up a new merge tag for PDF links that are tailored to individual contacts. You can use this process for any supported file type, including images.

Before you start

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

• Familiarize yourself with Mailchimp's content studio, merge tags, and methods to update contact information.
• Before you upload your files, save the PDFs with descriptive or numbered file names, so it's easy to match contacts to their PDFs.
• Contact-specific merge tags won't be activated in test emails. We recommend that you preview your email and test your merge tags with the Enable live merge tag info slider toggled on, or send a live email to a small test segment of your audience.

Task roadmap

This is a multi-step process. You'll need to complete these tasks in order, in 3 different sections of your Mailchimp account.

Content studio

• Upload each subscribed contact's PDF to Mailchimp's content studio.
• Copy and paste the PDF URLs from the content studio into a spreadsheet.

Audience settings

• Add a new field to your Mailchimp audience to store your contacts' PDF links.
• Update the audience via import to add PDF links from the spreadsheet to the new field.

Campaign builder

• Insert your new audience field's merge tag to your campaign.
• Test your contacts' custom PDF links in Preview Mode.

Update files with the content studio

To start, you'll work with Mailchimp's content studio and a spreadsheet application such as Excel or Google Sheets. First, upload each contact’s individual PDF to Mailchimp's content studio. Then paste the PDF links into the spreadsheet file. Finally, import the CSV file to a new field in your audience to link the PDFs to an audience field merge tag.

If you have a large number of files to upload and can host the files on your website, skip to step 5 in the following section.

Upload PDFs and create a CSV file

To add PDFs to the content studio and set up the audience update file, follow these steps.

1. Click Content, then click My files.
2. Click Upload and add your personalized PDF files.
3. On the pop-up modal, click Copy URL to copy the link to your clipboard.
   
4. Paste the PDF's URL into a spreadsheet file next to the matching contact's email address.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until every contact's email is matched with a PDF link.
   
6. Save the spreadsheet file in CSV format

Next, you'll import your CSV file to update your contact information.

Create and update audience fields

From the Audience page of your account, add a new field and start an auto-update import to add links from a CSV file to the new field. Use the new field's merge tag in the Campaign Builder to insert contacts' custom links.

Add new audience field to store PDFs

To add a new audience field and import your PDF URLs into it, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then Click All contacts.
2. Click the Current audience drop-down and choose an audience.
3. Click the Settings drop-down and choose Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags.
4. Click Add A Field and choose Text.
   
5. Input a field label, like PDF Links.
6. Uncheck the Visible box next to the new field so it won't appear on your signup form.
7. Enter a merge tag name, like PDF, in the Put this tag in your content field.
   
8. Click Save Changes.

Now your audience has a new field to store your PDF links.

Import a CSV file into your new audience field

In the next step, you'll add your contacts' PDF links to the audience field you created.

To add all the links in one large batch through a CSV import, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click Audience dashboard. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
2. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Import contacts.
3. Click the radio button next to Upload a file, then click Continue.
4. Click Browse to choose your import file.
5. Click Continue to Organize to go to the next step and match the columns in your import file to the fields in your Mailchimp audience.
6. On the Organize your contacts page, use the drop-down menus to select your audience and subscribed status.
   Click the Update any existing contacts box if you want to replace current information with the import data.
7. Click Continue to Tag.
8. On the Tag your contacts page, use the Search for or create tags drop-down menu to select an existing tag. Create a new tag by typing the tag name directly into the field.
9. Click Continue to Match. If you receive a Not Recognized error, click the info icon. In the Edit column label popup modal, choose your PDF field from the Select a field for this column drop-down menu, then click Confirm.
10. On the Match column labels to contact information page, click Finalize Import.
11. On the Review and complete your import page, click Complete Import.

Now your imported contacts have a file in the PDF Links field. You can start a targeted email campaign with the new links or view your imported contacts.

Insert the merge tag into a new email

To complete the process, you'll work in the Campaigns section of your account. The steps are slightly different for the new builder and classic builder.

Once a PDF file has been added to the new audience field in your contacts, insert the merge tag into an email campaign. When the email is sent, the merge tag will be replaced with the personalized PDF link from the audience field.

Insert a merge tag using the new builder

To insert the merge tag into a new email using the new builder, follow these steps.

1. In the Content section of the campaign builder, click Edit Design.
2. Highlight the text you want to link to the personalized PDF file, then click the three horizontal dots.
   
3. From the Merge Tags drop-down menu, choose the new PDF merge tag.

That’s it! You’ve added a merge tag to your email campaign that will display your PDF link to your contacts. Preview and test your email campaign to make sure it works correctly. If you don’t see the desired results, check out our Troubleshooting Merge Tags article.

Insert a merge tag using the classic builder

To insert the merge tag into a new email using the classic builder, follow these steps.

1. In the Content section of the campaign builder, click Edit Design.
2. Click the edit icon in a Text content block.
   
3. In the Content tab of the editing pane, insert the text you want to link and highlight it.
   
4. Click the Link icon in the toolbar. The editor also supports keyboard shortcuts on Macs to add links. If you’re using a Mac, highlight the text you want to link and use CMD+K to open the Insert or Edit Link pop-up modal.
   
5. In the Insert or Edit link pop-up modal, input your new field's merge tag in the Web Address (URL) field. Type the merge tag exactly as it appears in your audience settings. Select Advanced options to open the file in a new window, or to apply a Title attribute or CSS class.
6. Click Insert to add the link.
7. Click Save and Close.

That’s it! You’ve added a merge tag to your email campaign that will display your PDF link to your contacts. Preview and test your email campaign to make sure it works correctly. If you don’t see the desired results, check out our Troubleshooting Merge Tags article.

When you're satisfied with your campaign, send it or schedule it to go out later.

Can I use other file types?

Yes. Follow the same process to send personalized links to any other supported file type.

About personalized images

You can also insert personalized image files (jpg, jpe, jpeg, gif, png, or bmp). This is helpful if you want to include a coupon or small, contact-specific image in your campaign without asking contacts to click a link.

The process to insert a personalized image file is similar to the steps to insert a PDF link with a merge tag, with one small difference. In the audience settings, you'll want to add a new image field type instead of a text field. We'll replace the merge tag with an image instead of a link to a file.