Campaigns and Messaging
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      2. Campaigns and Messaging

      Personalize Your Messages with Merge Tags

       

       

      Text messaging is how people communicate with their friends and family. It’s a very personal way to have conversations and share information. With SlickText, you can create personalized messages to send to your audience by using merge tags. 

      A merge tag is a placeholder in a text message for data stored about your contacts. You can create merge tags for any SlickText field, including custom fields that you create. To see a list of available merge tags, click the bracket icon anywhere you can send messages in SlickText.

      When a message is sent to your contact, the merge tag will be replaced by contact data in the field specified by the merge tag. See these examples:

      Message You Wrote

      Data Stored

      Delivered Message

      Hey {{first_name}} , the season kicks off soon and our new gear has arrived just in time. To celebrate, we are giving our VIP members like you 10% off this weekend only. Come by and check out your favorite sports team's gear.

      First Name = Robert

      Hey Robert, the season kicks off soon and our new gear has arrived just in time. To celebrate, we are giving our VIP members like you 10% off this weekend only. Come by and check out your favorite sports team's gear.

      Hey {{first_name}}, the season kicks off soon and our new gear has arrived just in time. To celebrate, we are giving our VIP members like you 10% off this weekend only. Come by and check out our new {{favorite_sports_team}} gear.

      First Name = Robert

      Favorite Sports Team = Miami Heat

      Hey Robert, the season kicks off soon and our new gear has arrived just in time. To celebrate, we are giving our VIP members like you 10% off this weekend only. Come by and check out our new Miami Heat gear.

      Note:

      Merge tags can be included in the payload of an HTTP request when using a SlickText workflow. See Send HTTP Request object in this article to learn more.


      In this article:

      Use Merge Tags to Personalize Your Messages

      Changing the Default Fallback Text for Merge Tags

      Use Merge Tags to Personalize Your Messages

      With SlickText, you can create personalized messages to send to your audience by using merge tags. 

      1. Follow the instructions to create and send a campaign.
      2. When crafting your message, click the brackets icon { } at the bottom of the message field.
      3. This will bring up a list of available fields in the contact record. It will include basic fields along with any custom fields you’ve added. Select a field to use as a merge tag.
      4. Continue the steps to send or save your message. When your contact receives the message, the merge tag will be replaced with whatever data was stored in the corresponding field for that specific contact.

      Note:

      These instructions show you how to use merge tags on campaigns, however, you can use merge tags anywhere you can create messages in SlickText, including auto-replies and workflows.

      Change the Fallback Text for Merge Tags

      SlickText uses fallback text for merge tags if there is no corresponding data stored for a contact. For example, “Friend” might be used instead of the contact’s first name if the contact record does not have a first name. Here’s how to change these default values: 

      1. Follow the instructions above to add a merge tag to a message.
      2. At the end of the merge tag field name, but before the double closing brackets, enter a pipe character |, then enter the fallback text.

      For example, if you want to use “Buddy” as the fallback text for a first name merge tag: 

      • add |Buddy 
      •  to {{first_name}}
      • Resulting in a merge tag that looks like {{first_name|Buddy}}