How do I personalize my newsletters to my audience members?

Letterhead lets you personalize your newsletters with subscriber-specific details using personalization tags (also called merge tags), such as {{ firstName }}.

For example, writing Hi {{ firstName }}, in your newsletter automatically displays each subscriber’s first name when they receive it. See the complete list of personalization tags for what’s available.

Use merge tags in subject lines too

Merge tags work in the Email Subject field as well as the body. For example:

Hey {{ firstName }}, Don't Miss Out on This Week's Updates!

Each recipient sees their own name in the subject line — a simple way to boost opens.

Set a default value

Add a fallback so your message still reads well when subscriber data is missing:

{{ firstName or 'Subscriber' }}

This shows the subscriber’s first name when available, and “Subscriber” when it isn’t.

When a merge tag is invalid

If a merge tag can’t be read — a typo, an unclosed {{ … }}, or a field name that doesn’t exist — saving or previewing your newsletter can fail. When that happens, the composer highlights the specific block that contains the bad tag, so you can go straight to it and fix the tag instead of hunting through your whole newsletter for it.

Testing note

Personalization tags do not populate in test emails — they only fill in with real subscriber data once the letter is published and sent to your audience.

You collect the data behind these tags through your audience profile fields — see What are audience profile fields in Letterhead? For everything else you can do with your editions, see Working in Emails.