Dynamically adding the first name for each of your email campaign recipients results in better conversion rates. Inserting the first name into your email marketing is simple. But what happens if you don’t have some of your contacts first names?
By default Mailchimp inserts nothing (blank) if you use the first name merge tag value in your email campaign and don’t have a recipients first name in your Audience.
Learn how to add a default first name that will appear where you don’t have the first name of a recipient below.
Instructions to Add a Default Merge Tag Value in Mailchimp
Time needed: 2 minutes.
If you personalise your email campaigns sent from Mailchimp then follow these instructions that show how to add a default merge tag value for the first name field.
- Login to Mailchimp and view your contacts
Login to your Mailchimp account, click “Audience” then the “View Contacts” button.
- Enter the Audience fields screen
Click “Settings” then “Audience fields and |MERGE| tags”.
- Enter your Default Merge Tag value
Find your Field Label (to the left of the screen) and enter the default value in the corresponding “Default merge tag value” field (to the right of the screen). For example if you want “Customer” to appear if you’re using the first name merge tag and don’t have a contacts first name then enter “Customer”.
- Save the change
Click the “Save Changes” button to the bottom of the screen.
Video Transcript
Hi I’m Gary from organicwebcomau.wpcomstaging.com and I’m a Mailchimp partner.
We can use merge tags in Mailchimp to personalise our content. For example we could use the first name merge tag to insert the recipients first name but what happens if we don’t have a person’s first name? Well Mailchimp by default enters nothing, an empty value, so let me show you how we can set what will appear if we don’t have a person’s first name.
So in Mailchimp itself I’m in my audience. If I click “view contacts” I then click “settings”, “audience fields and merge tags”. On the left hand side I can see the fields in my audience. On the right hand side we have the default merge tag value. So looking at the first name field label there’s nothing in the default merge tag value for the first name so I could enter something in here that would appear as the default if I don’t have a person’s first name. So for example “customer” then at the bottom of the screen, you might not be able to see it because the video might be in the way, but I click “Save Changes”. And now if I use the first name merge tag value and I don’t have a person’s first name the word “customer” will appear.
Thank you for joining me.
Brilliant – so easy to do! Thank you Gary.