Has anyone used the First Name personalization when creating an automation email?

[donnamac]

I want to insert the customers first name in either the email title or the body of the email

However, when I send a 'test' email, it does not work.

I have used my email, that is INCLUDED in the customer segment I am sending it to, but it does not display my name in the test email.

I am hesitant to send it because I cannot see that it 'works'.

Has anyone used this personalization successfully?

Thanks

[StevenDunneDev]

Can you show us what you've done that isn't working for you?

[donnamac]

2 screen shots below. 

1. How the email is setup with first name in the title. I selected this from the dropdown menu under 'personalization'. Default if a name isn't available is blank. I interpreted this as it would just say "We miss you!" if that is the case.

1. Title of the email as it shows in my inbox.  Since it didn't 'find' a name, I expected it to say "We miss you !"

This test email address is in the segment that is attached to the email, but I am assuming
that is not used for a 'test'? So...I'm not really sure if this is going to work and I do not want
to send it if there is a chance it doesn't. 

Any suggestions ?

Thx

[JAM_72]

Same issue here. It has never worked and we have two shops so it's not unique to one store or the other. 

[Imogen · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @donnamac and @JAM_72! Thanks for taking the time to reach out to the Shopify Community Forums regarding this personlization option within Shopify Email! My name is Imogen. It's good to meet you!

I decided to do some testing in my own store with this personalization setting! In regards to that 'test' email you sent, it doesn't show an actual 'first name' option in the test email subject line as it doesn't have a specific customer assigned to that test email to generate that value for. I was able to replicate the 'first name' identifier text in my test email as well. The test email doesn't check for a first name value, so it will default to showing you 'first name' as that's the personalization identifier being used in this use case.

When I tested an actual email send to a customer segment with just my own email address and one customer, and that customer had a first name assigned to the customer profile, the first name of the customer profile appeared as expected. In a seperate test, if the customer had no 'first name' information stored in their profile, then the 'default value' (which is whatever text you add to that same 'default value box' you've shown in your screenshot' appears instead! I have a screenshot below to show these examples off:



All in all, you have things set up correctly! If you send this email out to a segment using that subject line, and it gets sent to a customer who does not have a first name attached to their customer profile, then the subject will appear without the 'First Name' value being included. Something I noticed in my testing was that when writing the subject like as 'we miss you 'firstname'!', and the user didn't have a first name value, there would be a space between 'you' and '!', looking a little awkward. It would be wise to include a 'default value here' something like 'shopper' or another generic term to refer to your customers, so the subject line appears properly formatted!