How to Use Dynamic Variables (Personalization) in Email Templates

What is “Personalization” in Email Marketing?

Personalization in Email Marketing means using the information you have for your subscribers to create dynamic messages that are unique to each user. In the simplest form, that could just be using the subscribers’ First and Last names, or their location.

Example: If you have the first name of your subscribers, you can use that information to greet them by their name: “Hello John!”

However, this is just scratching the surface of what Klaviyo can do. Depending on the brand and data you have gathered, this can go much deeper.

Let’s make another example…

If you own a pet store and you’ve gathered information from your subscribers about the breed of their dog, you can use that information in your email so that it’s much more tailored to each and every recipient.

Example: “This treat is perfect for your {{ dog_type }}” which depending on the “Dog Type” property of the subscriber can be translated into “This treat is perfect for your Golden Retriever”.

This example above intensifies the message by adding the specific dog breed in the text. This sounds much more compelling than the generic “Perfect for your dog”.

How to use personalization in Klaviyo Emails?

Klaviyo has made it easy to personalize your Emails. The information you store about your subscribers in Klaviyo are called “Profile Properties.” You can use any profile property to personalize your emails.  All available profile properties are in the dropdown tool labeled “Insert Properties”.

Let’s make an example of including the first name of your subscriber in the email and explain the process step by step.

Open your email template, select the block where you want to add the first name.

On the left side in the text editor, click on the place where you want to add the “First Name” property. Then, click on the “Insert Property” drop-down menu and select “First Name”.

A code should appear that looks like this:

{{ first_name|default:” }}

When the email is sent, this code will be replaced with the first name of the recipient. After the “first_name” tag in the code, you can see a “default” tag. This serves as a fallback option in case you don’t have the first name property for a specific subscriber. Between the brackets in the default:” part, you can place something generic like “friend, or there” so that this looks acceptable when a subscriber without a First Name property receives the email.

When the Email is sent, if you have the first name of the recipient it will be translated into:

“Hello John”

And if you don’t have the first name of the recipient, he will receive:

“Hello friend”

To check if you’ve set the variable correctly, you can use the “Preview” option in the template editor.

On the left side, click on the “Preview” option, select “Show directly in Klaviyo” and click on “Preview Now”.

If you’ve set the variable correctly, on the preview window the code should be replaced with your first name (the first name of the account which you’re logged in with), or if that property is not available, it will be replaced with the word “friend”.

In our example, the code was replaced with a first name.

NOTE: You can use the same syntax to add personalization in your Subject Lines. Generate the link in the template and copy/paste it into the Subject Line field of your campaign.

How deep, complex and personal you will make your emails depends on your needs and the data you have gathered of your subscribers.

To collect more relevant data, you can always use Klaviyo’s Signup Forms, use Surveys, Quizzes, etc.