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If you create an email campaign in Mailchimp and send a test email to yourself you may see << Test First Name >> where the first name should appear. This issue is to be expected as there is no first name available for a test email.
Below is a means to check that your merge tags are working as expected even although you may continue to see << Test First Name >> when using the first name merge tag in a Mailchimp email campaign and sending yourself a test email.
- Design your email campaign
Create your email campaign in Mailchimp as you usually would. Continue to design your email campaign until such time as you’re ready to test your campaign.
- Enter “Preview Mode”
Click “Preview and Test” then “Enter preview mode”.
- Test that merge tags are working as expected
Click the slider next to “Enable live merge tag info”. On the right side of the screen you should now see your merge tags working.
Please note that merge tags won’t work when designing a Mailchimp template as there is no associated Audience.
I am so embarrassed. I proudly used merge tages for the very first time. (Am I not too clever?) And when the LIVE messages went out every single message started “Dear <> <>” I have checked the audience, and FNAME as well as LNAME are defined. What did I do wrong?
Please help. I can’t find any help anywhere. Thanks in advance.
Hi Alfred,
Are you using a custom coded/HTML template?
Hi Gary, Thanks for the reply.
No, I used the “1 Column” Template, and have replicated month by month ever since.
Be blessed
Alfred
Alfred,
For your next campaign delete the text content block where you have been adding the merge tag. Then add a new text content block and add the first name merge tag using the button in the text block. Hope it helps 🙂
Thank you for this
Sure Alex
Hey Gary, I went live with my first Mailchimp and decided to test it. It was flagged as a promotion so it never made it to my main inbox. I noticed that the preview text still said “Hey <>” after the subject, which may be causing problems. Think I’ll just delete the Preview Text because the email starts with Hey (First Name Merge Tag) as it is. Any advice on this issue?
Hi Jimmy, go for it. Sometimes it takes a bit of testing to get it all going well.
Are you saying that even when you send the test email to an address in your Audience that has First Name and Last Name populated, and the merge tags set correctly (in fact they work fine on the Live Merge), the FNAME merge tag still won’t show the first name? Because I’ve been having this problem… it just shows the default (which for me is “Friend”).
Thanks!
Yes that’s correct Pauline.
None of the above are working for me but would appreciate your helps Gary. When sending a test e-mail to myself it comes up as
In preview mode it goes blank so no name or and none of my contacts names are shown.
I’ve tried to create a new box of text too.
Any other suggestions?
Many thanks,
Jonny
Hi Johnny, the best way to see if it’s working is to send yourself the campaign. In a test email Mailchimp doesn’t show the first name because it’s a test. Remember to set a default value for first names where you don’t have the first name for a contact:
