Personalising your newsletter with variables

Any information you have stored in a list alongside your subscribers’ email addresses can be inserted into your newsletter: first or last name, gender, city, age or hobby. Such a field is called a variable. You place it where the value should appear, and when sending, Laposta fills in the appropriate value for each subscriber.

Inserting a variable

In the text section of the editor, you can personalise your text with any field from your list:

Open the text block

In the editor (step 4), click on the text block you want to edit.

Open Variables

Click on ‘Variables’ at the top left above the text box.

Select a variable

Choose the variable you want to use. For example, {{voornaam}} will appear in your text.

Under ‘Variables’, you will also find the ‘Special links’ group, which contains the edit link to your subscriber’s own details.

Personalising the subject and preview text

In step 1, click on ‘Personalize’ next to the field for the subject or preview text and choose the variable you want to add.

If you import a ready-made newsletter, you will see all your variables on the right-hand side in step 3. You can use them in the HTML in the same way as in the templates. When editing the HTML, you can view them at the top of the page. See also Variables in the glossary.

Setting fallback text for an empty field

Not every field is filled in for every subscriber. If no value is known, Laposta displays the default value of that field. If no default value has been set, the space remains empty.

You can add a variable to your list via Subscribers → Settings → ‘Fields’. You can also enter the default value in the same place.

Specifying different fallback text per location

In the editor and in the subject line, you can also specify the default value directly. Place a comma after the variable, followed by the desired value: {{voornaam, user}}. This value always takes precedence over the default value from your list.

Useful if you include a variable multiple times in a newsletter and do not want to show the same fallback text everywhere.

Examples of what your subscriber sees

Suppose your list has the voornaam field and your newsletter starts with Dear followed by the ‘First name’ variable. What your subscriber reads depends on the chosen notation and what is in the field:

In your text	What is known	What your subscriber reads
`{{voornaam}}`	the first name Henry	Dear Henry
`{{voornaam}}`	no first name, default value `customer`	Dear customer
`{{voornaam}}`	no first name, no default value	Dear
`{{voornaam, user}}`	the first name Ingrid	Dear Ingrid
`{{voornaam, user}}`	no first name	Dear user

Do you want to show or hide entire blocks per subscriber instead of filling in individual words? Then use conditional content.

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