BRER Real Estate Marketing Avoid This Pitfall on MailChimp!

June 22nd, 2012

I got an email today from HootSuite, and it really made me laugh.? For you to understand why, I have to talk about the first newsletter that was sent out after I switched to MailChimp.

If you subscribe to our newsletter, you?ll know what I?m talking about.? If you don?t subscribe, you should because you?ll get a quick dose of real estate marketing news you can use.

Anyway, to my chagrin, the first newsletter turned out addressed to *|FNAME|*, when it should have been the first name of the recipient.?? We checked and double checked how the email was set up and all seemed to be correct.? Then, I stumbled on the problem.? All the documentation and examples from MailChimp use that *|FNAME|* to represent the first name in an outgoing email.

What they neglect to tell you is that you must use the name of the record in your particular database, and the default for that is *|MERGE1|*, *|MERGE2|* and so forth.? If you wanted to identify the name by FNAME, you?d need to rename the field yourself.

I tried to be philosophical, hoping that the newsletter recipients would roll with me on this one.? After all, anyone can make a mistake, right?

So, why did I laugh when I received the email from HootSuite?

Because it started out:? Hello *|FNAME|*

Let this be a warning to you! ?

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