Personalizing email/SMS messages with placeholders

Activity Messenger allows you to personalize emails and SMS you send with recipient names. If you imported participants from Amilia or from an Excel/CSV file, we make available placeholders for parents, their children and registration information. For Amilia consult the help page Building a list of participants from Amilia to find out more.

# Placeholders

The following placeholders are available relative to family accounts:

• Name: The recipient's full name
• First name: The recipient's first name
• Account owner name: The account owner's full name
• Account owner first name.: The account owner's first name.
• Participant name: The participant's full name
• Participant first name: The participant's first name.
• Child/children first name(s): The family account children's first names
• Parent name: The parent's full name. Use this when sending to both parents.
• Parent first name: The parent's first name. Use this when sending to both parents.

The following placeholders are available for registration and membership information:

• Activity: The activity the participant is registered to.
• Subcategory
• Category
• Program
• Group: The group the camper belongs to.
• Team: The team the player belongs to.
• Location: Where the activity is taking place.
• Staff name(s): Staff assigned to the activity
• Responsible: The person responsible for the activity.
• Start date/time: Start date/time of the first occurrence (class or game) of the activity.
• Start date
• Start time
• Next date/time: Date/time of the next occurrence (class or game) of the activity.
• Next date
• Next time
• End date/time: End date/time of the last occurrence (class or game) of the activity.
• End date
• End time
• All dates: For an activity or class, the list of occurrence dates and times.
• Daycare: Daycare options. For example "am pm".
• Password: Password to release custody of the child
• Friend: Pairing with a friend
• Membership name
• Membership expiration date
• Multipass name
• Multipass expiration date
• Multipass tokens left
• Custom: Custom value imported

The following placeholders are available if you use the Zoom meetings integration:

• Zoom meeting ID
• Zoom meeting URL
• Zoom meeting password

# Creating custom placeholders from form questions

Activity Messenger forms allow you to create your own mini client databases. Each question becomes a column in your database.

You can batch-email or batch-text respondents and insert information your have captured in those emails. To do so, edit your form question and assign it to a placeholder.

The placeholders you create will be available in any email or SMS you write. Click on the placeholder button. Form placeholders will be available under the Form section.

# Testing placeholders

You can test placeholders against lists containing only yourself. Go to Lists, Create and choose an Upload Excel/CSV file. Or if you use Amilia, create an activity and register yourself. Then in Activity Messenger create a list with from that activity.

Create a new template (menu Communications and Create a template) and insert placeholders. On the right-hand side, toggle the Test placeholders option and choose your list. You can cycle through participants to preview replacements.

Click on Send and choose your list to send yourself the email. When you receive it, make sure placeholder replacements worked as expected.

# Empty values

You can test empty values by sending a message to yourself. Placeholders {Name}, {First name} and {Last name} will be the only ones available. Others will be empty.

# Grammar corrections

Activity Messenger is smart enough to pluralize or singularize words around the "Child/children first name(s)" placeholder. For example, if there are many children, it will replace "has" with "have". You are free to write in singular or plural form. Activity Messenger will make corrections in both directions.