Variables and placeholders

Variables and placeholders · Help

A placeholder is a short marker you write inside a message that is replaced with the real value at send time. Write "Hello {{contact.first_name}}, your order is ready." and the message reaching Ayşe Yılmaz reads "Hello Ayşe, your order is ready." It is how one piece of text speaks personally to everybody.

💡 Placeholders are written inside double curly braces. You do not have to type them by hand: pick one from the placeholder list under the text box and it is inserted at the cursor.

What a placeholder does

A template executes no code; it only swaps recognised keys for values. Write a key that is not recognised and that spot is simply left empty — the message still goes out, just with that word missing.

Once the values are filled in, the text goes through a small tidy-up: runs of extra spaces collapse to one, and a space before a punctuation mark is removed. That way an empty placeholder does not leave a sentence like "Hello !".

The ready-made placeholders

These are the placeholders you can pick from the list in the editor:

Contact › First name — {{contact.first_name}} — The first word of the person's name. If there is no name, the username is used.
Contact › Full name — {{contact.name}} — The person's full name. If there is no name, the username is used.
Contact › Username — {{contact.username}}
Contact › E-mail — {{contact.email}}
Contact › Phone — {{contact.phone}}
Person's last reply — {{input}} — The last text the person wrote (the triggering message or their answer).
Account name — {{workspace.name}} — The account's display name.

Writing custom fields

Custom fields on the contact card are written with the field. prefix:

{{field.city}}
{{field.order_no}}
{{field.appointment_date}}

You must write the field name exactly: lowercase letters, digits and underscores. A misspelled field name is not recognised and its spot stays empty. The field concept is covered in Contact field (custom field).

Giving a default value

Some information is not filled in for everyone. You can give a placeholder a fallback with a vertical bar:

Hello {{contact.first_name|there}}!

If the name is known it sends "Hello Ayşe!", and otherwise "Hello there!". The same works for fields: {{field.city|your area}}.

⚠️ Note: without a default, an empty placeholder can break your sentence. For information that is not always present — a first name, a city, an order number — writing a fallback should become a habit.

The difference between a field and a placeholder

They are not the same thing; they work together:

A field is where the information is stored (on the contact card).
A placeholder is where that information is printed (inside the message).

Write a placeholder for a field you never filled and the message has a gap in it. That is why order matters when you build a flow: first the step that collects or writes the information, then the message that uses it.

Where placeholders work

Placeholders are filled in at these places:

In message step texts and in their variants.
In card and gallery titles and subtitles, and in the Media step's caption.
In the List step's header, body, footer and row texts.
In the Collect information step's question and its retry text.
In the Reply to comment step's texts.
In the Try it on step's question, working and result caption texts.
In the Set field value inside an Action step.
In the AI step's instruction and input.
In the Send e-mail step's subject, body and address.
In the Conversion step's name and value.
In the Template step's variable values.
In condition rule values — but only for the Tag, Field and Last reply rules, which is how you compare two pieces of information with each other.
In the External request step's path, body, header values and branch comparisons.
In sequence step texts.
In saved replies — the answers you call up with / in the inbox.

Escaping inside an external request

In the external request step a placeholder is escaped according to where it sits: a value placed in the address path or query string follows URL rules, and a value placed in a JSON body follows JSON rules.

The reason is simple: a quotation mark the customer typed could break a JSON body, and an "&" could break a query string. Text tidy-up (collapsing extra spaces) is also not applied there; the address and the body are preserved character for character.

A concrete example

A restaurant sends a booking confirmation:

Hello {{contact.first_name|there}}, your booking for {{field.party_size}} on {{field.booking_date}} is confirmed. Reply to this message if you have any questions. — {{workspace.name}}

A guest whose name is known gets "Hello Selin, …".
A guest whose name is unknown gets "Hello there, …".
The date and party size come from fields written by Collect information steps in the flow.
The account name on the last line says which business the message is from.

Length and placeholders

Text grows once a placeholder is replaced by its value, so never work out length without them. The channel limits differ: Instagram counts text in bytes (1,000 bytes; accented letters take 2 and emoji take 4), WhatsApp counts characters (4,096, or 1,024 when buttons are present).

The counter in the editor works the difference out for you and shows the tightest limit if your account has more than one channel type. If the limit is still exceeded, the message is trimmed before sending without splitting a letter or an emoji, and ends with an ellipsis; going out shortened is better than not going out at all.

Common mistakes

Using single braces. A placeholder needs double curly braces; single braces go out as plain text.
Misspelling the field name. {{field.OrderNo}} is not recognised. The correct form is lowercase with underscores, such as {{field.order_no}}.
Inventing a key. A key that is not in the list (for example {{contact.city}}) stays empty. If the city is a field, write {{field.city}}.
Not giving a default value. An empty placeholder leaves half a sentence.
Forgetting placeholders when counting length. Text grows once the values are filled in; text over the channel limit is trimmed at send time and ends with an ellipsis.
Trusting the preview. What you see in the editor is an example; the real values are written at send time. Use the automation's Test tab to try it.

Use placeholders well and a single piece of message text reaches thousands of people as if it had been written for each of them.