Learn how to personalize your email content and sending parameters (sender and subject) with contact attributes (first name, last name, email address, etc.) to engage your email recipients and improve metrics, such as open rates and response rates, using Brevo.
Good to know
- Contact attribute placeholders can be used in email templates and campaigns.
- We recommend you always double-check and test your placeholders before sending your emails.
❓How do contact attributes work?
Your Brevo contacts list contains contact attributes that refer to the information you store about each of your contacts. You can personalize your emails using contact attributes by inserting placeholders in your email templates and campaigns.
These placeholders are tags that pull contact-specific information (first name, email address, phone number, etc.) into your emails. When you insert a contact attribute placeholder into your email template, it will be automatically replaced by the personalized information stored for each contact at the time your email is sent.
Each contact attribute corresponds to a unique placeholder, which is structured as {{ contact.ATTRIBUTE }} where ATTRIBUTE is the name of your contact attribute exactly as it appears on your contacts list.
📝 Personalize your email content design
Personalize your email content design with your contact attributes such as their first name or birthday for example, to create engagement! You can either use the personalization tool from the Drag & Drop Editor or manually insert personalization in your Rich text or HTML editors.
Easily personalize content in the Drag & Drop Editor
Check out this video tutorial to learn how to add personalized salutation in an email using the Drag & Drop Editor 🚀.
Use this personalization if you want to insert one of your recipients' attributes inside your email design such as their first name for example:
- Access the Design step of your campaign creation and choose the Drag & Drop Editor.
- Place your cursor where you want to insert your placeholder and click 👤 Add personalization in the formatting toolbar.
- In the Simple tab of the Insert personalization popup, search and browse through the list of contact attributes to locate the attribute that you would like to insert as a placeholder.
- Add a fallback text that will be displayed if the contact attribute is empty for a recipient. For example, you can use "there" if the FIRSTNAME attribute of your contact is empty, so that they receive "Hey there".
- Click Insert.
- When personalization is inserted, a red placeholder with the name of the contact attribute will be visible.
In the above example, if the email is received by a recipient named Paul then they would see their name displayed in the email in place of the FIRSTNAME placeholder. The word "there" would be displayed for recipients with an empty FIRSTNAME attribute in your contact list.
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Use this personalization when you want to display contact information according to a set of conditions like according to the gender of the recipient or their favorite color. |
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To insert advanced conditions:
- When designing your email, place your cursor where you want to insert your placeholder and click 👤 Add personalization in the formatting toolbar.
- In the Advanced (conditions) tab you can:
- Add multiple cases to suit your needs. For example, adding different greetings for male and female recipients.
- Add multiple conditions on your contact attributes and also specify the text to be displayed for each case.
❗️ ImportantBe careful to write the attribute exactly how it appears in your contact lists because it is case-sensitive. For example, if for the contact attribute GENDER you wrote "Female" in your contact lists but you put "female" in the Advanced (conditions), the contact attribute will not be retrieved and the fallback text will be used instead. - Click Insert.
An If/Else placeholder is added to your email template. -
The specified text entered in the Insert field for each case will be displayed in your email depending on the conditions you set. If the contact attribute is empty, the fallback text from the Otherwise field is displayed.
Case 1 Case 2 Otherwise
You can edit the placeholder anytime by clicking on it from the Drag & Drop Editor.
Manually personalize content in the Rich text or HTML editors
If you prefer to create your emails in the Rich Text or Paste Your Code editors, you must manually add your contact attributes placeholders following the format {{ contact.ATTRIBUTE }} where ATTRIBUTE is to be replaced by the name of your contact attribute exactly as it appears in your contacts list.
| Input | Output |
| {{ contact.FIRSTNAME }} | Louis |
| {{ contact.EMAIL }} | louis@example.com |
| {{ contact.SMS }} | +1-541-754-3010 |
⚙️ Personalize your email setup settings
Brevo also allows you to personalize the information that appears first in your recipients' inboxes before they even open it which can increase your conversation rate. You can personalize elements in your Sender and Subject steps when creating an email campaign:
Personalize your Sender step
The Sender name is the name that appears in your recipients' inbox to identify the sender. Its purpose is to build trust with recipients and generate more openings.
By default, the Sender name is your company name but you can personalize it by overriding it with another name or personalize it to suit your recipients. For example, if your company assigns an account manager to each contact, you can display this account manager's name instead of your company name in the sender field of your recipients' inbox:
- Access the Sender step of your campaign creation.
- Insert {{ contact.ATTRIBUTE }} in the Name text field, where ATTRIBUTE is the value of the contact attribute exactly as it appears in your contacts list. If the email is sent to the contact paul.brownie@example.com, whose contact attribute for ACCOUNTMGR is Abby from The Green Yoga, the email will appear as follows in the recipient's inbox:
You can personalize the information your recipients will see regarding your addressee field:
The default value is [DEFAULT_TO] which is your recipient's email address but you can override it with your contact attributes or personalize it to suit your recipients:
- When creating an email campaign, access the Personalization section of the Additional settings.
- Check the Personalize the 'Send-To' field box.
- In the Personalize the 'Send-To' field field, click the person icon 👤.
- In the Insert personalization pop-up window, choose from the drop-down list the contact attributes you would like to display in your recipients' inbox 'To' field.
For example, you can choose the FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME attributes to populate the 'To' field with your recipient's first and last name so that instead of receiving an email addressed to 'john.smith@example.com', your contact will receive an email addressed to 'John Smith'. Personalizing your email settings can optimize your email reach. - Set other additional settings if needed and click Save.
To learn how to use a different reply-to email address, check our dedicated article Where are reply emails sent to?.
Personalize your subject line and preview text
- From the Subject step of your campaign creation flow, click the person icon 👤 in the Subject line or Preview text fields.
- In the Insert personalization pop-up window, choose from the drop-down list the attribute you would like to use.
- In the Insert personalization pop-up window, choose from the drop-down list the contact attributes you would like to display in your recipients' inbox subject line and preview text.
- In the text field type a default value to insert if your contact's attribute is empty.
- Click Insert and drag and drop the attribute anywhere in the text fields.
If the email is sent to the contact john.doe@example.com, whose contact attribute for FIRSTNAME is John, the email subject will appear as follow in their inbox:
⏩ What's next?
- Modify the formatting of your placeholder with filters
- Test your emails personalized with Brevo Template Language
- Troubleshoot your emails personalized with Brevo Template Language
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.
If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo expert partner.