Personal touches—like when someone remembers your name—make us feel special. And those feel-good feelings are exactly what we’re trying to help you convey with every Flodesk email you send.

That’s why we make it easy to customize your emails with your subscriber’s name—or with custom data fields.

Need some examples of how you could use it? Here are some of our favorite personalized subject and email lines to grab your subscribers’ attention:

To start personalizing your emails, make sure you’re collecting the information you want to use by asking your subscribers for it when they sign up.

Note, you can turn on the First name and Last name field for any of our forms, even if the form template initially doesn't show this information.

Step 1. Go to Forms > + New form

Step 2. Choose a form type that you want to create:

Step 3. Continue creating your form as usual

Step 4. Click into a form field on the main screen to access the 'Fields' tab on the right sidebar.

Next, click on the + Add button and add any of the default fields—like First name and Last name—or choose the Custom field option.

To learn more about how to use Custom fields, read our article on Can I add a custom field to a form?

Now let’s look at how to pull in personalized data into your emails.

Step 1. Add a Text block to your email.

Note: Personalization fields only work in plain text copy areas. You cannot add personalization fields like subscribers’ names to Layouts.

That’s because Layouts are converted to images once you finish editing your email, and images cannot read the underlying HTML codes and scripts.

Step 2. Place your cursor in the exact place within your Text block where you want to add the personalization field.

For example, if you want to add your subscriber's first name as a personalized greeting, place your cursor after Dear but before the comma, with a space in between.

Then, just type the @ symbol as you would in a social media post, which will bring up a menu to select which type of personalization field you would like to insert:

Note: if you forgot to collect your subscriber’s first name but still want to add something personal, fill out the Enter fallback value field. This is what will show up if the subscriber’s first name isn’t available.

We recommend choosing a word or phrase that matches your brand. We love friend, gorgeous, fellow small biz owner, sis and email marketing champion 😉 .

Step 3. Click the Insert field button and the personalization code will appear in your email’s text block.

Pro Tip: In addition to personalizing your email greeting at the beginning, try experimenting with adding your subscriber’s name at the end to increase engagement. For example: James, I created this for busy people just like you. Pre-order your copy now!

Hint: you can use the paper airplane icon in the top left-hand corner of the email builder to send a test to yourself to make sure everything's exactly as you'd like it.

Step 4. You can add more personalization fields anywhere in your email, as long as it’s in a Text block, by repeating the steps above!

Also, if you added Custom fields to your form, you can pull in that data to your emails.

Let's see an example.

If you are a wedding photographer and your Form asks for your subscriber's wedding month, you can use this data in the copy of your emails to make your subscribers feel uniquely seen.

To learn more about how to add custom fields to your forms, read Can I add a custom field to a form?

You can also add that personal touch before your subscribers even open your email. Give them the warm and fuzzies by adding their first name to your subject line or the preview text.

The same way, you can pull in data from custom fields that you collected from your subscribers.