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About the Merge Fields Personalization Category

Use merge fields to customize treatments by contact or prospect. Contacts or prospects can have multiple fields associated with them, each field defining some attribute of a contact or prospect (for example, the person's first or last name). For each unique contact or prospect, the value of these fields might differ. You insert the merge field personalization element in the text and then the value of the Contact or Prospect field is populated into the text where you inserted the merge field personalization item.

The following simple example shows two prospects with the first names of Sally and Fred, how the personalization item appears in the treatment before and then after the contact or prospect field is populated.

Before population in the treatment text:

Hello [Field: First Name]!

When Sally receives the treatment, she gets the following:

Hello Sally!

When Fred receives the treatment, he gets the following:

Hello Fred!

In some contact or prospect records, a value might not exist for a non-numeric merge field. For example, the database record from which the value comes is a NULL entry. When the contact or prospect field is populated, the merge field can default to one of the following values:

• Empty string. The value is an empty string (a string containing no characters).
• Unspecified. The value is the word Unspecified.