Personalizing with merge tags
You can also use merge tags to add custom contact attributes to your email. If you sync contact data to Loops, you can include that data as a merge tag in your email. It’s important to note that contacts who do not have the appropriate merge tag or a fallback variable will not receive the email.
A basic merge tag - personalizing an email with First Names
Merge tags help you take your contact’s attributes and add them in context to an email. A common way of using them is to personalize an email greeting by a contact’s first name. To accomplish this, select the merge tag icon in the toolbar of the email editor like so 👇
When the email is sent, it will include the first name:
“Hey Chris,”
But it will appear like this in the editor:
Custom merge tags
Any contact attributes you sync with Loops either through the API or through Zapier you can include as a merge tag in your email to further personalize it.
For example, say you wanted to create a rollup email with metrics about a contact over the last week. You could sync those metrics to Loops as data attributes.
The data attributes will automatically be available as merge tags and in your dropdown within the merge tag menu as pictured below:
Setting a fallback variable
It is important to set a fallback variable for any custom merge tags you use. If a contact does not have the appropriate merge tag, the fallback variable will be used instead.
For example, if you set a fallback variable for “First Name” as “there”, then if a contact does not have this data attribute, the email will include “there” in the place of their name. This is a great way to make sure that your emails still make sense to contacts even if there is no data available.
No merge tag is available for the contact
If no merge tag is available for the contact, then contacts without the matching merge tag will not be sent an email.
For example, if you select “First Name” from the merge tag dropdown, but one of the contacts in your list doesn’t have a “First Name” in their contact information that has been synced with Loops, then they will not receive the email.
Coming soon: the ability to get a list of all contacts who have not received an email - in the meantime, please slack us a message or send us an email directly ([email protected])
Merge Tag syntax
It’s not yet possible to add Merge Tags to button text. While we build the UI for that, we recommend you use typed Merge Tags instead. For example, you could write {teamName} in a button text to include dynamic text that will personalize for contacts.
For a list of all possible merge tags, visit https://app.loops.so/settings?page=api. The API Name is the merge tag you would insert: {firstName}, {lastName}, {email}, etc.
It’s important to use camelCase format to type your merge tags, if you have any questions about how to format your merge tags, reach out to us!