In Argenta these are called merge tags. You drop a tag like [FirstName] into your email, and when the message goes out each recipient sees their own information in its place. One email, personalized for everyone on the list.

The Syntax

Merge tags use square brackets, not curly braces, and they are case sensitive. [FirstName] works. {FirstName} and [firstname] do not, and will print exactly as typed in the delivered email.

Tags work in the subject line as well as the body.

Insert One

1. Open your email template from Communication > Email Templates.
2. Put your cursor where the personalized text should go.
3. Click Insert Merge Tag in the editor toolbar. It has a tags icon and is labeled Tags.
4. Pick the tag you want, and it drops in at your cursor.

You can also type a tag by hand. Just match the spelling and capitalization exactly.

What You Can Merge

There are 31 tags in seven groups.

• Contact info: [FirstName] [LastName] [ConstituentName] [Nickname] [Salutation] [Email] [Phone] [Birthday]
• Mailing address: [MailingAddress] [MailingCity] [MailingState] [MailingZip]
• Organization structure: [Chapter] [Division] [Department]
• Donations: [TotalDonated] [LastDonationDate] [LastDonationAmount] [FirstDonationDate] [NumberOfDonations] [DonationYearTotal]
• Membership: [MembershipNumber] [MembershipLevel] [RenewalDate] [MemberSinceDate]
• Volunteering: [VolunteerTaskHours] [YearsOfService] [VolunteerSinceDate] [NumberOfVolunteerTasks] [LastVolunteerTaskDate]
• Organization: [OrganizationName], your organization's name

When Someone Is Missing That Data

The tag is replaced with nothing. The recipient never sees a stray [FirstName] in their email, they see a blank where it would have been.

There is no built-in fallback word, so write your sentences to survive an empty value. "Dear [FirstName]," becomes "Dear," for a record with no first name, which is why a greeting on its own line is safer than a tag buried mid-sentence. If a clean fallback matters for a particular send, filter your list to people who have that field filled in.

Test Before You Send

1. Send a single test to yourself first.
2. Check that every tag resolved. A tag that shows up in brackets in the delivered email is misspelled or miscapitalized.
3. Check the subject line too, since it is easy to forget a tag is in there.
4. Think about a record with thin data, not just your own well-filled one.

Worth Knowing

• Tags saved in a template personalize every time that template is used, so you set them up once.
• Team members you CC on a send get blank values for the personal tags. The CC copy is not personalized to the recipient, by design, so a CC never exposes another person's details. [OrganizationName] still fills in.
• Sending a message with no merge tags at all skips the merge step entirely, so a plain announcement is not slowed down by this.

For the full reference, see Complete Guide to Using Email Merge Tags in Argenta.