Merge Tag Cheatsheet
MailChimp has a ton of extremely powerful merge tags to customize your email campaigns. Here's a handy cheat sheet of all the different merge tags that you can use in your email campaigns, along with a quick description of each. You can also use this help center entry to find your list's specific merge tags .
Formatting
*|LOWER:YOUR_MERGE|*
Change the value in *|YOUR_MERGE|* to be all lower-case
*|UPPER:YOUR_MERGE|*
Change the value in *|YOUR_MERGE|* to be all upper-case
*|TITLE:YOUR_MERGE|*
Change the value in *|YOUR_MERGE|* to be all title-case (the first letter in each word is capitalized)
*|URL:YOUR_MERGE|*
Encode the value in *|YOUR_MERGE|* to be included in URLs
*|HTML:YOUR_MERGE|*
Encode the value in *|YOUR_MERGE|* to support HTML tags inside the field
Dynamic Content
Note that merge tags for dynamic content are not available for RSS-to-Email campaigns.
*|IF:CONDITION|* and *|END:IF|*
The content between these tags will show for members that match CONDITION. CONDITION can be a merge field, so *|IF:FNAME|* Hi! *|END:IF|* will only show for members with an FNAME value. It can also be more complex, like *|IF:FNAME != Bob|* Your name's not Bob! *|END:IF|*.
*|ELSEIF:CONDITION|*
The content after this tag will show for all members that match CONDITION that did not match a previous IF condition. For example:
*|IF:STATE=CA|*
Save 20% on surf boards!
*|ELSEIF:STATE=GA|*
Save 20% on mountain bikes!
*|ELSE:|*
Save 20% on shoes!
*|END:IF|*
*|IF:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|ELSE:|* *|END:IF|* or *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|END:IF|*
Use this conditional to define what content is shown in your campaign archive page.
*|INTERESTED:Interest1,Interest2|* and *|END:INTERESTED|*
The content between these tags will show for all members that are interested in "Interest1" or "Interest2".
*|GROUP:A|* and *|END:GROUP|*
The content between these tags will only show for the provided group in an A/B split campaign. Use this to do A/B splits on content as well as subject lines and delivery dates.
*|MC:TOC|*
Add a dynamically-generated table of contents to your newsletters by using this tag.
List Information
*|LIST:NAME|*
The name of the list
*|LIST:COMPANY|*
The company name in the list contact info
*|LIST:ADDRESS|*
The full contact address for the list, as text
*|LIST:ADDRESS_HTML|*
The full contact address for the list, as an HTML hCard
*|LIST:PHONE|*
The contact phone number for the list
*|LIST:URL|*
The contact web address for the list
*|LIST:DESCRIPTION|*
The explanation for how this member opted in to the list
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBERS|*
The current number of active subscribers to the list
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBER_BADGE|*
A formatted HTML block showing how many subscribers there are on the list. You can also use *|LIST:SUBSCRIBER_BADGE1|* through *|LIST:SUBSCRIBER_BADGE4|* for more styles.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBE|*
The URL to the list's subscribe form
*|LIST:RECENT|*
Show links for the 5 most recently sent campaigns to the list. You can hack it like: *|LIST:RECENT10|* to show the most recent 10 (use any number).
*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*
Inserts a link that lets subscribers update their information and subscription preferences.
*|UNSUBSCRIBE|*
We will place this in all your campaigns for you, but if you're writing your own code or want to move the tag around in your campaign use this tag rather than copying any old unsubscribe links.
Sharing
*|MC:SHARE|*
Add links in your email to popular social bookmarking sites
*|SHARE:SITE_NAME1,SITE_NAME2|*
Select which social bookmarking site(s) you would like to have show up. For example, *|SHARE:Facebook,Twitter,MySpace,Digg|*. These sites may currently be shared to:
BlinkList
Delicious
Design Float
Digg
DZone
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
MisterWong
Mixx
MySpace
Netvouz
NewsVine
Propeller
Reddit
Slashdot
StumbleUpon
Technorati
Twitter
Webnews.de
YahooMyWeb
*|TWITTER:FULLPROFILE|*
This Twitter Merge Tag will bring in the background from your twitter page, avatar, follower count, a follow button and recent tweets.
*|TWITTER:PROFILE|*
This Twitter Merge tag will bring in the background, avatar, follower count and a follow button. It will not pull in recent tweets.
*|TWITTER:TWEETS(NUM)|*
With this tag - remove (NUM) and replace it with the number of tweets you want to see on your campaign. So if you want 5 recent tweets, use *|TWITTER:TWEETS5|*. You can use this in combination with *|TWITTER:PROFILE|* to really customize what you're sharing with your recipients.
Campaign Information
*|MC:SUBJECT|*
The subject line for this campaign (does not work for A/B split campaigns)
*|DATE:FORMAT|*
Shows the current date in the given format "FORMAT". For date formatting, "m" will be replaced by the month, "d" by the day, and "y" by the year. For example, *|DATE:d/m/y|* will show the day, then the month, then the year, separated by slashes. Want to do something more custom with your date? View a full reference of date options on the PHP website .
*|MC:DATE|*
This is a shortcut to show the current date as month/day/year.
*|EMAIL|*
The *|EMAIL|* merge tag pulls in the recipient's email address into your content as listed in your list database.
*|FORWARD|*
The Forward to a Friend tag will let you send a note with a campaign archive link to your friend (it won't save their information).
RSS Format
*|RSS:POSTS_HTML|* or *|RSS:POSTS|*
Creates a progressively generated set of all of your posts in HTML format
*|RSS:POSTS_TEXT|*
Creates a progressively generated set of all of your posts in text format
*|RSS:RECENT|*
Show links for the 5 most recently published entries before the posts in the email
Info About the RSS Feed
*|RSSFEED:TITLE|*
The title of the RSS feed
*|RSSFEED:DATE|*
The publish date of the feed
*|RSSFEED:URL|*
The URL for the feed as a whole
*|RSSFEED:DESCRIPTION|*
The feed description, if provided
Info From Individual Items in the Feed
*|RSSITEMS:|* and *|END:RSSITEMS|*
Creates the beginning and ending flags for each RSS item. The stuff between gets replicated for each RSS item in the feed.
for each item, there are these tags available:
*|RSSITEM:TITLE|*
The title of the RSS item
*|RSSITEM:URL|*
The URL for the RSS item
*|RSSITEM:DATE|*
The publish date of the RSS item
*|RSSITEM:AUTHOR|*
The name of the author for the RSS item, if provided
*|RSSITEM:COMMENTS_URL|*
The URL for comments, if provided
*|RSSITEM:CATEGORIES|*
A comma-separated list of the categories for the RSS item
*|RSSITEM:CONTENT|*
A short summary of the RSS item content in HTML format
*|RSSITEM:CONTENT_TEXT|*
A short summary of the RSS item content in plain-text format
*|RSSITEM:CONTENT_FULL|*
The full content for the RSS item in HTML format, if provided
*|RSSITEM:CONTENT_TEXT_FULL|*
The full content for the RSS item in plain-text format, if provided
*|RSSITEM:ENCLOSURE|*
A link to any attached file (like a podcast) with an icon, file name, and file size
*|RSSITEM:ENCLOSURE_URL|*
The URL for any attached file (like a podcast)
*|RSSITEM:SOURCE|*
A link to the external "source" of this item, if one is provided
Email Translation
*|TRANSLATE:XX|*
Add links in your email to translate the content from where XX is the language code. Available language codes can be found in this help center list of language codes .
Video Sharing
*|YOUTUBE:VIDEO_ID|*
Inserts a video from YouTube according to the provided video ID .
*|VIMEO:VIDEO_ID|*
Inserts a video from Vimeo according to the provided video ID .
*|BLIPTV:VIDEO_ID|*
Inserts a video from Blip.tv according to the provided video ID .
A video ID consists of letters and numbers, dependent on the service provider. It is present in the URL of the site, found at the top of the browser window. Occasionally, the video ID will be presented within a long URL. If this is the case, the video ID ends before a question mark, as seen in the YouTube and Blip.tv examples.
To use the merge tags, simply copy the video ID into the tag.