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Instruction FAQ

How to use ShortCodes in Email Templates

Why Use ShortCodes?

One of the things that makes a system like Zonmaster so powerful is that you don’t have to write an email for each and every product and customer. By using shortcodes you can substitute in things for the current order automatically. Back in the old days we used to call this ‘Mail Merge’. It adds great flexibility to te emails you can write.

ShortCode Format

All Zonmaster shortcodes take the form of %%short_code%%. The shortcode is the whole thing – from the opening %% to the closing %%.

In some shortcodes – like %%review_link%% – you can enter in your own text. So, the shortcode looks like this: %%review_link:your text here%%. What that means is that after the shortcode name (in this case, review_link) there is a colon (:) and then you can write your own text. So you can have %%review_link:click here to leave a review%%. Try to avoid using punctuation inside your text (sorry about that. We’re working on it)

DO NOT style the text in a shortcode. i.e. DO NOT bold, italicize, color etc etc a shortcode tag.

Common Codes

Customer Name

To personalize your emails to the customer, Zonmaster offers a range of ‘buyer related’ shortcodes. For example, to use the buyers first name in a greeting you can write

Hi %%buyer_first_name%%

and in the resulting email that will come out as

Hi Bob

(assuming their name is Bob of course!)

Product Name

We always always always recommend that you use the %%product_nick%% shortcode when you want to include the name of what the customer ordered in an email. This way, if you’ve created a nickname (a shortened or different name for a product) it will substitute that.

Thank you for buying %%product_nick%%

Will result in

Thank you for buying World’s Best Widget

Store Logo

If you uploaded your store logo to your Amazon Store’s settings page on Zonmaster then you can include that in any email by using %%store_logo_small% (or medium or full).

Thanks again!

Bob from My Store

%%store_logo_small%%

Will result in

Thanks again!

Bob from My Store

All Zonmaster ShortCodes

You can find a full list here (always available under the ‘Emails’ menu as ‘Email Variables Help‘)