Oct 28, 2022 2 min read

Outpost Makes it Easy to Personalize Your Automatic Messages to Subscribers

Painting of astronaut emailing in space

Outpost makes it easy to personalize emails to your subscribers in our Autoresponder, which is the Best Damn Autoresponder for Ghost. You can do this with a simple code in the email template for autoresponder messages sent out on your behalf when people subscribe, upgrade, tip, give a gift subscription, etc.

You can choose to address a reader by their full name in their Ghost member profile or by their first name, which is deduced from their full name (e.g. John Doe, would be "John").

Full Name

For example, if you put the greeting, "Hey %SUBSCRIBER_FULL_NAME%|there," in your email, Outpost's intelligent system will either greet readers by their full name, or substitute "there" if no name is given.

If I were to subscribe with my first name only, I'd get a message that says, "Hey Ryan," and if I were to sign up with my first and last name, I'd get, "Hey Ryan Singel."

First Name

If you just want to address a reader by their first name, we have an option for that. In this case if someone has only entered one name (e.g. Madonna signed up for your newsletter), our system uses that name as the first name.

No Name

As is, anyone who doesn't have a name in the system will get a friendly "Hey there," as Outpost makes it easy to automatically personalize without making it awkward if a reader hasn't entered their name when signing up.

Screenshot of the customizable greeting readers who don’t sign up with a name can get
An example of how the personalized greeting will adapt if no name is given

Fully Customizable

That is also adjustable so you could say change the "|there" to another option for those that signed up with only their email.

For example:

"Hello %SUBSCRIBER_FULL_NAME%|friend," would greet named subscribers with something like "Hello Albert Einstein," while those readers without a name in their Ghost member profile would receive, "Hello friend," instead. (Note that the "friend/there/etc" must be one word so don't try to use |Party Person).

To personalize the Autoresponder emails that are sent on your behalf, go to the Autoresponder tab in the Outpost Control Center menu:

Screenshot of Outpost Control Center menu, with Autoresponder circled
Head to the Autoresponder tab in your Outpost Control Center

Choose which Autoresponder email you'd like to personalize, and change the greeting to your liking. For more information, and options for making greetings your own, check out the personalized greeting help page.

Ryan Singel
Ryan Singel
Ryan Singel is the co-founder of Outpost. He's a former journalist for Wired, the co-founder of online recommendation company Contextly, and a Fellow at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society.
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