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Dynamic Images in Your Email Campaigns

Getting creative with MailChimp *|MERGE|* tags

You've probably used "Merge Tags" before, to personalize your campaign with a recipient's "FNAME" or "LNAME".

But there are other nifty ways to use merge tags that you might want to try. For instance, have you ever wanted to swap out an image, or chunk of content, based on the recipient? For example, what if you want a different "coupon" to appear for each recipient, based on his account status? Here's how you can do it in MailChimp...

Let's say you've got a database of customers, and one of your fields is "Account_Type". Below is what it might look like in Microsoft Excel...

Step 1. Setup your list in MailChimp

If you were to import this list into MailChimp, you'd probably end up with merge tags that looked something like this:

Take note of the merge tag: *|ACCT_TYPE|* and how it corresponds to the field in my database for "Account Type."

Step 2. Create & upload all your different images

Now let's say you want to send every "gold" member a Special Gold E-Coupon in an HTML email. Every "silver" member gets your silver E-Coupon. And so on. The easiest way to do this would be to create all your coupon files and name them gold.gif, silver.gif, bronze.gif, etc. and then upload them to your server:

Step 3. Code your images with merge tags

Next, in your HTML email, you'd simply use merge tags inside your image code to dynamically insert the appropriate image's filename for each recipient. For example:

<img src="http://www.mywebsite.com/images/*|ACC_TYPE|*.gif">

Wherever MailChimp sees the *|ACCT_TYPE|* merge tag, he'll insert that recipient's account type data. So if a recipient in your database is a "gold" member, then the gold.gif coupon will be displayed in his email.

Step 4. Preview each recipient's email

Just to make sure, you can actually preview how your email will look for each and every receipient on your list before you send the campaign. Just click the "Next and back" buttons at the bottom of our preview window (below is a screenshot).

You can use merge tags to personalize your HTML email graphics in lots of different ways. Some really quick examples might be:

• Photos of each recipient's insurance agent, or financial advisor
• Car dealers can swap photos of the car their customer purchased from you
• Swap out vendor logos when you send them sales updates

If you're thinking about trying something like this over the holidays, setup a test list in MailChimp, and just try it out for yourself first. Once you get the hang of it all, it's pretty easy! If you've already imported your list in MailChimp, and you want to add a new column to your database, simply import your list onto the existing list with the "autoupdate" option chosen and we'll help you map the new field and add it to your signup form.