We all know you can use MailChimp’s merge tags to start an email newsletter with:

But what if one of your subscribers left their first name blank when they signed up?

Well, you could make the first & last name fields required on your signup form, but that doesn’t help if you’re importing a list where you never had that choice.

Luckily, you can use MailChimp’s advanced merge tags to dynamically replace missing FNAMEs with a generic greeting, like “Hello”. Just use this:

In plain English, this will look and see if a recipient has an “FNAME” in the database. If so, MailChimp will insert the first name, and capitalize the first letter of the name (for example, “Hi Bob,”). If it can’t find the first name, it just places a “Hello,” instead.

Special thank-you to MailChimp power user Yankee Publishing for the idea.

Dynamic Content in your emails

Dynamic content can be a really powerful tool for your email marketing, and our advanced merge tags make it easy. Here are more examples for using MailChimp’s advanced merge tags:

• Video: Merge tag tricks
• Personalize your welcome emails with dynamic content
• A/B Test your design and content in MailChimp