Personalising automated messages
How to reference trigger and step data in your messages, and what's worth personalising.
Every step in a workflow can see the data produced by the trigger and by all the steps before it. That’s what lets an automated email reference something real.
How it works
When you compose an email or SMS inside a workflow, the editor knows what data is available at that point in the flow and suggests it as you type. You insert a placeholder; it’s replaced with the real value when the workflow runs.
What’s available depends on where the step sits. A step directly after a review trigger can reference the review. A step after a Send Survey action can also reference the response.
Add the step first, then write the message. The suggestions are derived from the step’s position, so a step in the wrong place won’t offer the data you’re expecting.
What’s worth personalising
Their name. The lowest-effort, highest-return personalisation there is.
The specific thing that happened. “How was your stay last Tuesday?” outperforms “How was your recent visit?” — it proves a person-shaped system is paying attention.
What they said. In a recovery email, referencing the actual complaint is the difference between an apology and a form letter.
Where. For multi-location businesses, naming the branch stops the message feeling like it came from head office.
What not to do
Don’t personalise everything you can. An email that name-drops six variables reads as a mail merge, which is exactly the impression you’re trying to avoid.
Always have a fallback. If a placeholder can be empty, make sure the sentence still reads. “Hi ,” is worse than “Hi there,”. Check what happens when the data is missing — for imported lists, first names are missing more often than you’d think.
Don’t reference data the customer didn’t give you. Referencing an internal score or a segment name is unsettling. Personalisation should feel like attention, not surveillance.
Watch length in SMS. Placeholders expand. A message that fits in one segment while you’re writing it may not once a long name is substituted.
Test with real data
Run the workflow test before switching it on — that’s the only way to see what the substituted message actually looks like. A placeholder that renders as a raw variable name in a live customer email is an embarrassing and completely avoidable failure.
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