What are placeholders?
Placeholders are custom strings that store extra information about your contacts. You may also know these as "Mail Merge" fields.
These fields let you personalise messages by pulling data unique to each recipient. They work across SMS, email, voice, letters, and fax.
For example:
First Name {FirstName}
Membership ID {CustomString1}
Last Purchase Date (CustomString2}
How to add placeholders to your contact lists
If you want to automatically personalise your communications, preparation is key. You need to have the right customer data and make sure your contact list is set up correctly.
Here’s how to do it:
When preparing your contact list for upload, make sure the file includes columns for all the fields you want to use. Use clear field names in your contact list file to make segmenting audiences and mapping easy. For example:
Name: The recipient's first name.
Phone: The recipient's phone number.
Custom String 1: e.g. Membership ID.
Upload the file to Contacts and map your fields. Match each column from your file to ClickSend fields. Along with the basic customer data, you have up to four custom strings in each contact list. You have the flexibility to set these as whatever you need. For example:
Map First Name to {FirstName}
Membership ID to {CustomString1}
Review and finish the upload process.
Using placeholders in messages
It’s simple to use placeholders for SMS, MMS, email, fax, voice and post.
Compose your message or communication.
Add placeholders for custom strings. These placeholders will automatically pull the data from your contact list. Example: {FirstName}: Inserts the recipient's first name.
Test your message. Send a test message to ensure placeholders are replaced correctly.
Adjust formatting or content as needed.
Common issues with placeholders
There are a couple of reasons why your placeholders might not be working correctly. Try the below fixes or contact customer support via an online chat.
Placeholders will only work when sending to a contacts list. If you try to send to an individual contact it will ignore any placeholders used.
Make sure that the contact has data in the relevant fields within the contact list. If there is no data, the system can’t pull the placeholders.
Check the data mapping is correct, via Contacts. Then select the relevant contact list and review.