Apart from the built-in placeholders, you can also use any member attributes to further personalize your messages. Say you captured the following attributes from your new members:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Hometown
- Favorite Food
You could craft a personalized message as follows:
Dear [FIRST NAME], Hello from your friends at the Funky Town Restaurant. We hope the [LAST NAME] family is well in the friendly town of [HOMETOWN]. If you're ever in the mood for a fresh [FAVORITE FOOD], please drop in—we'd be happy to have you! ...
This would appear to different subscribers as:
Dear Bart, Hello from your friends at the Funky Town Restaurant. We hope the Simpson family is well in the friendly town of Springfield. If you're ever in the mood for a fresh pizza, please drop in—we'd be happy to have you! ...
Or:
Dear Clark, Hello from your friends at the Funky Town Restaurant. We hope the Kent family is well in the friendly town of Smallville. If you're ever in the mood for a fresh Krypto-Burger, please drop in—we'd be happy to have you! ...
If a user doesn't have an attribute for a particular placeholder, it will be replaced with a blank space. For example, if user "Mary" hadn't entered any attributes, her message would look like:
Dear, Hello from your friends at the Funky Town Restaurant. We hope the family is well in the friendly town of . If you're ever in the mood for a fresh , please drop in we'd be happy to have you! ...
If the attributes on your subscription form are optional, try to structure your content in such a way that a blank placeholder substitution won't ruin the text. For example, the following text will look awkward with blank substitutions:
Your name is [FIRST NAME], your favorite food is [FAVORITE FOOD], and your last name is [LAST NAME]
Whereas the following text would at least "degrade gracefully":
Your name: [FIRST NAME] Your favorite food: [FAVORITE FOOD] Your last name [LAST NAME]