Mailchimp Shortcode, also known as “merge tags,” can be used for all kinds of dynamic information.
The information you collect through your MailChimp signup form is saved in an audience field and linked to a unique label called a merge tag (MailChimp shortcode).
Copy and paste a Mailchimp shortcode (merge tag) into your email campaign to add personalized or dynamic content.
You can add personalized or changing content to the campaigns you send by using merge tags.
This article tells you about MailChimp Shortcode (merge tags) and how you can use them to make your email campaigns more personal.
In the list below, you can see all of the tags you can use.
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Definition of terms
If you’re new to Mailchimp, take a few minutes to learn how we talk about audiences and merge tags.
- Audience
A list of contacts, along with information about their profiles, preferences, and other information.
- Audience field
A place like a cell in a spreadsheet where specific contact information is kept.
- Tag merge
A text-based identifier that is unique and matches account data, like an audience field.
- Dynamic content
The content that a merge tag adds to a campaign is either personalized or unique in some other way.
Things to Know about MailChimp Shortcode (Merge Tags)
MailChimp Shortcode also called “Merge tags,” can be used in email campaigns, some default forms, and response emails.
Because different audiences have different fields, they also have different merge tags.
If you want to send to more than one Mailchimp audience, be sure to use the right merge tags for each audience.
Merge tags pay attention to style.
It checks your merge tags for extra bolding, italics, or another formatting around or inside them.
You should save default merge tag values in your audience settings, which we’ll talk about in this article so that each of your contacts can see good-looking content.
How MailChimp Shortcode (merge tags) works.
Your Mailchimp audience has fields that list information about your contacts.
Each audience field has its merge tag, which looks like this: *|EXAMPLE|*
When you add a merge tag to your campaign, the content in the corresponding audience field will replace the tag.
For example, to include the email addresses of your contacts in your email, you would put the *|EMAIL|* MailChimp shortcode where you want the email address to appear.
When your contact gets the campaign, they will see their email address where the Mailchimp shortcode was put.
credit: mailchimp.com
Some merge tags pull in URLs, which you can use to make links to other content, like text or images.
When you use a merge tag to link an image in your content, you can add the merge tag to the URL by using the hyperlink tool on the editor toolbar.
When your contacts click on the linked image, they will go to the URL that the merge tag points to, such as a page to update their profile.
Different kinds of MailChimp shortcode (merge tags)
Mailchimp has two kinds of merge tags to help you add content for your audience and contacts: system merge tags and audience merge tags.
System merge tags usually refer to the information in your Mailchimp account, while audience merge tags only refer to the information in your audience, such as contact information.
System merge tags can be used to translate your campaign or add links to share it on social media, RSS content, and account information.
System merge tags can also be used to add links to your campaigns that let people unsubscribe, update their profiles, or forward them.
Audience field merge tags pull information about your audience into your campaigns. This could be the URL of the signup form, the name of the company the audience works for, or information about a specific contact, like their email address or first and last name.
Every time you send a campaign that uses merge tags, we’ll replace the merge tag with the most recent information from your account or audience.
How do I find my shortcode in Mailchimp?
You can find the MailChimp shortcode here or simply see the full list of MailChimp shortcodes down below.
MailChimp Shortcode for Campaigns
Any kind of email campaign can use the merge tags in this section.
*|ARCHIVE|*Builds a Follow the link in this email to get to your campaign page.
*|BRAND:LOGO|*Adds a placeholder for your logo to your campaign.
In a custom-coded template or Code content block, you can use this merge tag instead of an image URL.
*|CAMPAIGN_UID|*Shows the ID that is unique to your campaign.
*|REWARDS|*The Referral badge will be added to your campaign.
*|REWARDS_TEXT|*Adds a link to the Rewards page that is just text.
*|MC:TRANSLATE|*Adds links so that your sent campaign can be translated into other languages.
*|TRANSLATE:xx|*Adds a list of links to content in your campaign that can be translated.
Change xx to the code for the language your campaign is written in, and we’ll show you other available languages.
For example, if you use *|TRANSLATE:en|* for an English campaign, we’ll include links to all supported languages other than English.
*|MC_LANGUAGE|*Shows the language code for a specific subscriber.
For example, if the language of your subscriber is set to English, the code en will show up in the merge tag output.
Use this merge tag to show content based on the language settings of your subscribers.
*|MC_LANGUAGE_LABEL|*Shows the language in plain text for a certain subscriber. All languages are written in English, so if your subscriber’s language is set to German, we’ll show “German” instead of Deutsch.
*|DATE:X|*
Use the format *|DATE:X|* to show the current date in a certain way.
Change X to the format you want to use.
For example, *|DATE:d/m/y|*, where d is the day, m is the month, and y is the year.
On the PHP website, you can see a full list of all the date options. The merge tag will show the subscriber the date that the email was sent.
*|LIST:RECENTX|*Shows a list of links to the most recent campaigns that were sent to the audience you chose. Change X to the number of campaigns you want to see. If you don’t fill in X, it will show the number five.
*|MC:SUBJECT|*shows the subject line of the campaign.
*|MC:TOC|*Makes a table of contents for your campaign that is linked.
*|MC:TOC_TEXT|*Makes a plain text table of contents for your campaigns.
*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*
In a campaign with custom code, you can use this merge tag to create preview text.
Check out Edit Your Email’s Subject Line, Preview Text, From Name, or From Email Address for more information on how to use this merge tag.
*|POLL:RATING:x|* *|END:POLL|*Makes a poll where subscribers can give ratings from 1 to 10. Find out how to include a poll in your campaign.
*|SURVEY|* *|END:|*
Surveys with one question and a set number of answers that subscribers can choose from. Find out how to link your campaign to a survey.
*|PROMO_CODE:[$store_id=x, $rule_id=x, $code_id=x]|*
You can add a coupon code to a campaign with this tag. Change the “x” variables in your Promo Code merge tag to show the promo code you want to show.
- $store_id
Your connected store’s name, which is set by the API.
It goes to the first store that was connected. Through our API, you can get store IDs.
- $rule_id
Shows the conditions that must be met for a discount code to work, and they are set by the API.
For example, a rule that tells a coupon code to give a certain discount. Through our API, you can get rule IDs.
- $code_id
This is set by the API and tells us what your coupon code is. Through our API, you can get code IDs.
Feed merge tags
Use Feedblock RSS merge tags to quickly add RSS content to Regular, Plain-Text, and A/B Testing campaign types.
RSS campaigns
With merge tags, you can pull RSS content into RSS Campaigns. For each task, you’ll use a different tag.
Use pre-formatted RSS tags for an easy solution, or use channel and item tags to make your feed unique.
Shortcode for MailChimp personalization
Use these merge tags (shortcode) to show information about your subscribers in your emails, signup forms, and response emails.
The most common merge tags for personalization are on the list below, but you can use any merge tags that your audience uses.
*|FNAME|*If your subscriber’s first name is accessible in your audience, it will be included into your email.
*|LNAME|*
Inserts the last name of your subscriber if it is accessible in your audience.
*|EMAIL|*The email address of your subscriber will be entered here.
*|PHONE|*If your subscriber’s phone number is accessible in your audience, it will be included into the email.
*|ADDRESS|*Subscriber addresses are included if they are accessible in the audience.
Email subject lines
These merge tags let you add information about your audience, how to get in touch with them, the current date, and more.
They are often used in the subject lines of emails, but they can also be used in regular campaigns, forms, and emails in response.
*|LIST:NAME|*Put the name of your target audience here.
*|LIST:COMPANY|*Inserts the name of your company or organization, which is required for your audience’s email footer content.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBERS|*Plain-text number of people who have signed up for your list.
*|USER:COMPANY|*Puts in the name of the company or organization that is listed in your Mailchimp account under “Primary Account Contact Information.”
*|MC:DATE|*Displays either MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY, depending on how your account Details are set up.
*|CURRENT_YEAR|*The current year is shown. If you put a copyright date in your campaign, this is great because it will automatically change every year.
Email footers
These merge tags use the Required Email Footer Content in your Mailchimp account to get important information about your audience.
Even though they are made for the footer of your Mailchimp campaigns, you can use them anywhere in your campaign.
*|UNSUB|*Give your email subscribers the chance to stop getting your emails. (It’s the law and part of our Terms of Service.)
*|LIST:DESCRIPTION|*Inserts your audience’s permission reminder.
*|EMAIL|*Inserts your contact’s email address.
This is often used in the unsubscribe link, so people know who will be taken off the list if they click the link.
<a href="*|UNSUB|*">Unsubscribe</a> *|EMAIL|* from these emails.*|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|*Adds your mailing address and the “Add us to your address book” link, which leads to the vcard (.vcf) file with your address information.
*|LIST:ADDRESS_VCARD|*Adds a link to your campaign that says “Add us to your address book.”
*|LIST:ADDRESS_VCARD_HREF|*Adds a text URL that points to your address information in your vcard (.vcf) file. Use this as the Web address for a link to make a version with links. Or, use this to translate the link that says “Add us to your address book.”
*|LIST:NAME|*Put the name of your target audience here.
*|ABOUT_LIST|*Makes a link to the page called “About Your List.”
*|LIST:UID|*Inserts your audience’s unique ID from your audience’s hosted forms.
*|LIST:URL|*Inserts the website URL that was set in the Required Email Footer Content for this audience.
*|LIST:ADDRESS|*Puts in plain text your company’s or organization’s mailing address or P.O. Box.
*|LIST:ADDRESSLINE|*Puts your mailing address on a single line as plain text.
*|LIST:PHONE|*Put in the phone number of your business or organization.
*|LIST:COMPANY|*Put the name of your business or organization here.
*|LIST:EMAIL|*Inserts your default “Reply-To” email, which is set in the Audience name and defaults for this audience.
*|ABUSE_EMAIL|*Inserts the email address from this audience’s Required Email Footer Content.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBE|*Enter the URL for the hosted signup form for your audience.
*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*Adds a link to the contact’s page where they can update their profile.
*|FORWARD|*Adds the URL to the Forward to a Friend form for your audience.
Signup confirmation page and welcome email
These merge tags can be added to your audience’s Confirmation “thank you” page and Final “welcome” email. They will not work on other pages or emails that are part of the signup process.
*|OPTIN_DATE|*
Displays the date your subscriber confirmed subscription to your emails. Displays MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY based on the settings in your account Details.
*|OPTIN_DATETIME|*
Pulls in the date and time your subscriber confirmed subscription to your emails. Output is based on the settings in your account Details.
*|UNSUB|*
Gives your subscribers the opportunity to unsubscribe from your emails. (Required by law and our Terms of Use.)
*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*
Gives your subscribers the opportunity to change their profile information. Learn more.
Account and audience information
Use these merge tags to display essential details about your audience, your company/organization, or account contact information.
Account information
Each of the following merge tags pull information from the Administrator contact information in your Mailchimp account.
*|USER:COMPANY|*Displays the company or organization name.
*|USER:ADDRESS|*Inserts the administrator address for the account on a single line.
*|HTML:USER_ADDRESS_HTML|*Inserts the administrator address for the account on multiple lines.
*|USER:PHONE|*Inserts the administrator telephone number for the account.
*|USER:URL|*Inserts the administrator’s website URL.
*|USER:UID|*Displays the “u” parameter from your hosted Mailchimp audience forms.
Audience information
*|LIST:NAME|*Displays the name of your audience.
*|LIST:COMPANY|*Displays the name of your company or organization as set in the Required Email Footer Content for this audience.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBERS|*Displays the number of subscribers in your audience in text format.
*|LIST:RECENT|*Displays the 5 most recently sent campaigns for the audience you’re sending to. This is great if you want to show examples of recent campaigns to people who are interested in subscribing. See an example.
*|LIST:RECENTX|*Displays clickable links to recent campaigns sent to your audience. X is the number of campaigns to show. If a value for X isn’t included, we’ll pull in the 5 most recent campaigns by default.
*|ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|*Creates a shortened URL to your sent campaign.
*|LIST:DESCRIPTION|*Pulls in your audience’s permission reminder.
*|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|*Pulls in your audience’s mailing address and the “Add us to your address book” link that points to the vcard (.vcf) file with your address details.
*|LIST:ADDRESS_VCARD|*Adds a standalone “Add us to your address book” link to your campaign.
*|LIST:ADDRESS_VCARD_HREF|*Allows you to create a link in your campaign using this merge tag as the URL to point to your vcard (.vcf) file with your address details.
*|ABOUT_LIST|*Creates a link to the About Your List page.
*|LIST_HOST|*Pulls in the “http://yourcompany.us1.list-manage.com/” portion of your hosted form URLs.
*|LIST:UID|*Pulls in the unique ID for your audience.
*|LIST:URL|*Pulls in the website URL set under Required Email Footer Content for this audience.
*|LIST:ADDRESS|*Inserts your audience’s mailing address as plain text.
*|LIST:PHONE|*Inserts your company/organization telephone number as set under Required Email Footer Content.
*|LIST:EMAIL|*Inserts your default “Reply-To” Email under Audience Name and Defaults.
*|ABUSE_EMAIL|*Inserts the email address located under Required Email Footer Content.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBE|*Adds the URL for your audience’s hosted subscribe form. Learn More.
Subscriber counts
Use these merge tags to display the number of subscribed contacts in your audience. For the *|LIST:SUBSCRIBER_BADGE|* tags, each number represents a different badge style.
*|LIST:SUBSCRIBERS|*Displays a number. You can use this with a text blurb. For example, if you have 100 subscribers, and input “*|LIST:SUBSCRIBERS|* Happy Customers are currently enjoying our newsletters” in your campaign, we’ll display “100 Happy Customers are currently enjoying our newsletters.”
Social Share
There are a variety of merge tags you can use to connect Mailchimp with your social media accounts, including Twitter, Tumblr, and more.
*|TWITTER:FULLPROFILE|*Populates your campaign with your Twitter avatar, follower, tweet, and following counts; a follow link, and your latest tweets.
*|TWITTER:PROFILE|*Populates your campaign with your Twitter avatar, follower, tweet, and following counts; and a follow link. Doesn’t include your latest tweets.
*|TWITTER:PROFILEURL|*Displays your direct Twitter profile URL. For example: http://www.twitter.com/mailchimp.
*|TWITTER:TWEETS2|*This lets you control the number of tweets to show in your campaign. Replace 2 with the number of tweets you’d like to display.
If you don’t include a number, we’ll default to your five most recent tweets. Use this in combination with |TWITTER:PROFILE| to customize what you’re sharing with your subscribers.
*|TWITTER:PROFILE:TWITTERUSERNAME|*Can be used to insert multiple Twitter profiles in your Mailchimp campaign. Replace TWITTERUSERNAME with the Twitter display name of any profile you want to show in your campaign. To work properly, the Twitter feed must be publicly available.
*|TWITTER:TWEET|*Adds a Tweet button to your campaign that allows subscribers to share your campaign page link.
By default, the tweet includes your campaign’s subject line, your Twitter handle, and a link to your campaign page.
*|TWITTER:TWEET [$text=my custom text here]|*Includes your own custom text, as opposed to the subject line of your newsletter in your Tweet.
Also includes a link to your campaign page. It’s important to be aware of the following when using this tag:
- Plain-text only.
- No quotation marks.
- $text needs to be lowercase.
- The space between Tweet and [$text] is intentional and required.
Video
Embedded videos aren’t supported in most email clients and are often stripped out completely.
If you have videos you want to share, use our video merge tags for Blip.tv, YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia.
Learn how to add a video to a campaign with merge tags.
Conditional merge tags
When you add conditional merge tags to a specific piece of email content, that content will display only to the recipients who meet the conditions you set.
Conditional merge tags can be used in email campaigns and in your audience’s Final “Welcome” Email.
API
Use these merge tags when creating content via the Mailchimp API.
*|EMAIL_UID|*Pulls in the “e” parameter from hosted form URLs, campaign tracking links, etc.
*|UNIQID|*Pulls in the $member->email->unique_id; (API function). If used in an email campaign, this tag will pull in your subscriber’s unique ID. It can also be used to create unique links for subscribers.
*|CAMPAIGN_UID|*Displays the unique ID for your campaign.
*|EVENT:PROPERTY|*Pulls in the $member->email->events->property; (API function). If used in an event-triggered automated email, this tag will pull in the specific property value of an event.
For example, let’s say you set up an automation triggered by the event meetup_registered, which has location properties for each city that hosts a meetup.
If your content includes “Get ready, |EVENT:location|“, a recipient who registered for a meetup in Atlanta will see “Get ready, Atlanta.” Learn more about events.
Content encoding
The content encoding class of merge tags class allows you to modify how the content inside your merge tags is displayed.
*|HTML:YOUR_MERGETAG|*This tag handles audience field contents as raw HTML and makes no changes. This is a great way to pull in URL parameter values from your audience and include them in your links.
For example, if you have a merge tag, *|MYPARAMS|*, and a value includes something like ?id=1234&custom=awesome — in your link, use http://www.yourwebsite.com/*|HTML:MYPARAMS|* to keep the value of your merge tag as-is: http://www.yourwebsite.com/?id=1234&custom=awesome.
*|URL:YOUR_MERGETAG|*Encodes the value of your merge tag for inclusion in a URL.
For example, if you have an audience field with the merge tag, *|QUERY|*, and the value includes something like I love monkeys — in your link, use http://www.yourwebsite.com/*|URL:QUERY|* to URL encode the value like: http://www.yourwebsite.com/I+love+monkeys.
*|TITLE:YOUR_MERGETAG|*Changes the value of your merge tag to be title case (the first letter in each word is capitalized).
*|LOWER:YOUR_MERGETAG|*Changes the value of your merge tag to be all lower case.
*|UPPER:YOUR_MERGETAG|*Changes the value of your merge tag to be all upper case.
Automation
Position and Subject Line Merge Tags
Use these merge tags to automatically display the numbered position of the email within the automation, and more.
They can be used in the subject line or body content for automation emails. They should not be used in regular campaigns.
By default, the numbers will display as the digit (1, 2, 3, etc.). Add the following text before the end the merge tag to define how you want the number to display.
As an example, you would type *|AUTOMATION:TOTALEMAILS(TEXT)|*. You do not need to replace the text in parentheses with a value.
(DIGIT) – displays a number (1, 2, 3, etc.)
(DIGITORDINAL) – displays a number as an ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.)
(TEXT) – displays the number as text (one, two, three, etc.)
(TEXTORDINAL) – displays the number as ordinal text (first, second, third, etc.)
*|AUTOMATION:TOTALEMAILS|*Displays the total number of emails in the automation.
*|AUTOMATION:CURRENTPOSITION|*Displays the current position of the email within the automation.
*|AUTOMATION:NEXTPOSITION|*Displays the next position in the automation.
*|AUTOMATION:PREVIOUSPOSITION|*Displays the previous position in the automation.
*|AUTOMATION:NEXTSUBJECT|*Displays the subject line of the next email in the automation.
*|AUTOMATION:PREVIOUSSUBJECT|*Displays the subject line of the previous email in the automation.
Leave and Join Automation Merge Tags
Use these merge tags to allow contacts to add or remove themselves from an automation. The Leave Automation merge tag can only be used in its associated automation.
*|AUTOMATION:WORKFLOWREMOVEURL|*
Adds a link to your automated email, so subscribers can remove themselves from an automation. This doesn’t remove contacts from the entire audience.
*|AUTOMATION:WORKFLOWADDURL(campaign_id)|*
Adds a link to your campaign, so contacts can join an automation they’re interested in. Be sure to replace campaign_id with the automation ID.
How do I add a shortcode to Mailchimp (merge tags)?
To add dynamic shortcode content to your campaigns, either type the shortcode directly into your campaign content or choose a MailChimp shortcode (merge tag) from the Merge Tags drop-down menu.
Shortcode can be added to any email campaign or automation email, as well as the Form Builder’s Final “welcome” email.
Type a tag
When you type a merge tag right into your content, make sure to put an asterisk (*) and a pipe (|) around the label.
If there is a typo in the merge tag, your contacts will see the wrong text instead of their personalized content.
Most U.S. keyboards have the pipe key above the enter/return key.
How to Choose a tag in the toolbar
To avoid typos and syntax mistakes, use the merge tag menu to add a merge tag to a content block.
Place your cursor where you want the merge tag to go, and then click the Merge Tags drop-down menu on the editor’s toolbar.
Just pick the merge tag you need, and you’re done.
How to Change the standard merge tags
By default, merge tags for an audience look like this: *|MERGE1|*.
You can change the names of these merge tags, like *|BIRTHDAY|* or *|CITY|*, in your audience settings to make them more clear.
But be careful when you rename your audience merge tags because our system uses some field names that are reserved and can’t be used anywhere else.
How to Set the default values for merge tags
A merge tag only works right when there is information in the field it is linked to.
Make sure that your most-used audience merge tags have default values that will show if a certain field in the contact profile doesn’t have any information in it.
For example, you could set the first name merge tag’s default value to “Friend.”
Then, when you use “Hello *|FNAME|*”, in a campaign, people whose first names are not in your audience will see “Hello Friend.”
If you don’t set a default value and the contact doesn’t have the data in their profile.
How to Test and troubleshooting MailChimp Marge Tags (Shortcode)
Before your campaign goes out, you should always look at and test your shortcode.
Here are some things you should know about testing merge tags in Mailchimp.
MailChimp shortcodes linked to audience fields are specific to each contact, so they won’t show up in a test email (even if the test email address is the email address of a contact in your audience).
Turn on the Enable live merge tag info slider in Preview Mode to see a live preview of your merge tags.
In the Template Editor, you can’t see what merge tags (shortcode) look like.
To test these Mailchimp shortcode, make a campaign from the saved template and use our preview and test tools.
If you use shortcode in your signup forms and response emails, use your form to sign up and look at how the merge tags look at each step.
Check out our MailChimp troubleshooting guide if your shortcodes don’t work the way you want them to.
If you have any questions, kindly drop them in the comment section below.