Email marketing is one of the most direct and effective methods of connecting with your audience, and merge tags can make your campaigns more impactful by personalizing the content for each recipient.
Also known as substitution strings, personalization fields, or personalization tags, merge tags are placeholders that dynamically pull personalized information, such as a subscriber's name or birthday, into an email. For example, instead of starting your email with “Hello,” you can use a merge tag to say “Hello [First Name],” creating a more personal touch.
Let’s take a deeper look at how you can use them in the email campaigns you design in PosterMyWall’s Email Maker:
Step 1: Collect information with sign-up forms
The first step to using merge tags is gathering relevant subscriber data. Here’s the process of creating sign-up forms on PosterMyWall:
- Navigate to the emails section of your My Stuff, click on "Mailing lists” and then click on the plus button under ‘Sign up forms’ to create a new sign-up form.
- Write the form name and organization name in the relevant fields and select the mailing list where you want all submitted email addresses to be collected.
You can select an existing mailing list or create a new one for a specific campaign by either manually adding the contacts or uploading a CSV file.
- Once you click ‘Create signup form’, you’ll be taken to the signup form maker.
You can add info fields such as first name, last name, phone number, birthday, address, and custom fields (such as “Preferred Product” or “interests” to the signup form and specify they are required fields.
Plus, click on the ‘Confirmation’ button to make changes to the alignment and background color of the confirmation message your contacts will receive after submitting the information in the form.
Once you create a signup form, click
‘Publish’.
- You can publish the signup form as a Link to Form, Popup, or Embedded Form. If you choose to publish it as a popup, you can choose between a 5-second or 10-second popup delay.
The data corresponding to each field for the contacts in a mailing list can be viewed and edited by navigating to the Emails section of your My Stuff, clicking on the ‘Mailing lists’ category, and opening the mailing list you selected in the signup form.
Step 2: Adding merge tags to email content
Once you have subscriber data, you can integrate merge tags into your email content.
To add merge tags in your emails, either click on the small tag icon that appears when you select a text box or click the “+” sign under Merge tags on the right-side toolbar. Select the type of merge tag from the list of options. Here are the types of merge tags available in PosterMyWall’s email maker:
| Merge tag | Function |
| [[First Name]] | Inserts the subscriber’s first name |
| [[Last Name]] | Inserts the subscriber’s last name |
| [[Email Address]] | Inserts the subscriber’s email address |
| [[Phone number]] | Inserts the subscriber’s phone number |
| [[Birthday]] | Inserts the subscriber’s birthday |
| [[Address]] | Inserts the subscriber’s address |
The merge tag for the custom field you added in the signup form will also be available in the drop-down list.
If the field corresponding to a specific merge tag, e.g., birthday, wasn’t a required field in the signup form, some people might leave it blank. In this case, you should add a default value for the merge tag. This is the text that would show up in the emails of the contact in place of the information they did not provide (e.g., if Hello [[First Name]] is empty, the first name merge tag should display “Hello there!” if the default value is set to 'there!').
Step 3: Publishing emails with merge tags
After setting up your merge tags, it’s time to publish your campaign. Click ‘Send’ on the top right corner of the email maker. Then you can edit the campaign name, subject line, and preview text content. You’ll also get a preview of your email content.
If you’re satisfied with how everything looks, click ‘Next’ to choose a mailing list for your campaign. Once this is done, you can preview your email in a browser, send a test email to verify personalization, or simply publish your campaign.
And you’re done! Now you’ll be able to send personalized emails to your subscribers and connect better with them, as readers are much more likely to engage with content that specifically speaks to them.