Personalise Messages with Variables

Last updated: 18th May, 2022

Messages that are personalised to their recipients are far more likely to be read and acted on.

Variables make it easy to personalise your messages with any information you have collected in GoSquared.

For example, you can easily address your contacts by their name using the “First Name” variable.

You might want to reference the last product one of your customers purchased – if you’re tracking that with GoSquared you could reference that in messages with your customers using a “Last Purchased Product” Variable.

How to use Variables in your messages

When creating a message in Engage, you can add a Variable by typing “{{” to bring up the Variable picker.

You can also insert a Variable by hitting the “Insert” button to bring up the Insert menu, or by highlighting a piece of text and choosing “Add a Variable” from the inline menu.

In the variable picker, you can choose from any properties or events you’re tracking against your contacts in GoSquared.

Selecting the Variable in your message will bring up the Variable options panel where you can change the Variable, and set a fallback.

🎓 It’s important to set a fallback for any variables you’re using in your messages. The fallback is shown if the variable isn’t set for the recipient of your message.

For example, if a contact’s name isn’t set, then you could set the fallback for “First Name” to “there”. The message would default to saying “Hi there” if their first name is not available.

Variables in action

Inspiration for personalising your messages with Variables

Variables are a flexible and powerful way to personalise your messages at scale.

The more properties and events you track against your contacts the more options you’ll have for personalising your messages.

You can personalise both the body of your message and the subject line of an email with Variables.

• Address your contacts by their first name.
• Mention the current plan a customer is currently on.
• Thank customers for their loyalty one year after their sign up date.
• Notify customers of their current usage levels – e.g. “So far you’ve added 200 photos.”

Adding Variables to HTML

To add a Variable in HTML, you will need to write-out your selected Variable.

For example, if you viewed the ‘First Name’ Variable from the drop-down picker, you would need to type-out {{ first_name }} if writing in HTML.

To add a default fallback to this, you would type {{ first_name | default: “there” }}.

As another example, to send a Welcome email to greet a new sign-up, you might write the following message in HTML.

Hello {{first_name | default: "there"}}, great to see you signed up for your {{ custom_plan }}. If you have any questions on getting set up, or to find out how other {{ company_industry }} businesses are using our software, hit reply to this email and we'll be in touch!