In this post and accompanying video, I’m going to be showing you how to add personalization to your campaign emails.
I’m also going to be answering the question, why the heck should you personalize email? What does that actually mean? So let’s get started answering those last two questions.
What is Personalization?
First, what is personalization when it comes to campaign emails is probably what you think it might mean and that is making your emails more personalized to that individual contact. And why you should do it is because they want to have this interaction. They want to have this engagement they’ve opted in to receive content from you, and they want to be receiving information that is useful to them. And to do that, you want to make your content more personalized to them, more catered toward them.
How Do You Do That?
How you do that is by using the data that you’ve been collecting over time. Such as purchases that they’ve made, links that they’ve clicked, geographic data or age data, or depending on your email marketing provider, tracking links that they’re clicking on your websites.
Using that data, you can then send content to them specifically personalized to them so that you get more engagement, more clicks, and more purchases. What I’ll be doing is taking a little piece of that personalization. I’ll be adding a first name to our campaign email.
Watch the How-To Video
Merge Tags
Mailchimp uses something called merge tags. Now, merge tags are just unique identifiers that represent the actual data that’s associated with each contact.
So let’s go take a look at this and explain it in a little bit more detail. So from your audience dashboard, go over to the right-hand side, click on the dropdown, and click on settings. When we get to the settings page, you can either scroll down a little bit and click on audience fields and merge tags, or you can go up to settings and click on audience fields and merge tags.
The audience fields represent the field labels associated with your signup form. Mailchimp then goes ahead and assigns the merge tag for each of the field labels in that signup form. They put in FNAME for first name, LNAME for last name, and so on and so forth.
You can add more field labels, and Mailchimp will assign more merge tags for each of those field labels. To add a field, click on the very bottom to add a field. There are several different types of fields that you can add to your audience signup form. Also, note that you can have these fields as required or visible in your signup form. For example, I have here some things that are visible and some things that are not visible.
Adding the First Name Merge Tag to a Campaign Email
So let’s go ahead and add the FNAME merge tag to our campaign email. So we switch over to all campaigns and I’ve got one in draft here. Next, click on edit design. So in the edit, using the new Mailchimp builder, the beta version, this will work just as well in the classic builder. I’ve got something here with a title that says, welcome to the club. Well, I want to add the first name here, and I’ll want to insert the merge tag that represents the first name.
So I’ll click in the title and I’ll type in, Hey, space comma space. Now after, hey, right before the comma, I want to go over to the top right and click on merge tags and I’ll select first name. And that’s how easy it is to add a merge tag that represents the first name of each of your contacts.
Does it have to be just the first name?
No. You can add other merge tag fields to your campaign emails, but we’re just adding in the first name for you to get an idea of how this all works. The next thing you want to do is make sure that it works properly. Well, how do we do that?
Testing the Merge Tag
Well, Mailchimp gives you the preview option. While in edit design mode, go over to the top right, and click on Preview. As you look at the preview, you’ll see it says, Hey, test first name. What the heck does that mean? Well, it’s basically filling in what represents the merge tag if there actually was a first name here. So how do we view that it’s actually working properly?
Enable Live Merge Tag Info
Over on the right-hand side you’ll see Enable live merge tag info. In other words, it’s going to be picking up the data from your contacts and displaying it inside that merge tag. So if you enable that, you’ll see that the test first name actually turns into a name that’s associated with one of your contacts, and you can click through to make sure all is working. Now, if you have hundreds and thousands of contacts, you’re really not going to go through each one but this is more of a spot check to make sure that the merge tag is working as it should, which in this case it is.
If we turn off enable live merge tag info, it goes back to test first name. Click exit out of the preview mode since you know that our merge tag is working appropriately. So the question you might be asking is, well, what if some of my contacts didn’t use a first name because it wasn’t required, so they left that blank? What am I supposed to do?
Default Merge Tag Value
Mailchimp gives you a nice recourse and that is to put in a default merge tag value. So let’s go take a look at how that works. So if I go back into my audience fields and merge tags, you’ll notice over on the right-hand side, there is a column called Default Merge tag Value. Whatever the main focus of your audience list is, you want to think about what should be going in their default in lieu of a person’s first name. So let’s stick with “friend.” Make sure you go down to the bottom and click save changes. All right, our changes have been saved.
Let’s go back over to the campaign builder, go back into preview mode, and see what this default merge tag value looks like. And you notice right away where it used to say Test first name now says, Hey, friend because that is now the default merge tag value. So if I enable live merge tag info, you notice that when there is a first name for that particular contact, it will use that first name. However, if I start to click through my test list, you’ll see one at one point, it will change to, Hey, friend because it doesn’t have a first name associated with his contact details. So in lieu of a first name, we add in friend automatically because that’s the default value.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. Thanks so much for watching. Take care and I’ll see you in the next video.
