# Merge tags and spintax

> The seven merge tags Doreach supports, how fallbacks work, and how spintax varies your wording so no two messages go out identical.

Source: https://doreach.co/help/campaigns/personalization-and-variables/
Last updated: 2026-08-15

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Doreach has two personalization tools: **merge tags** for prospect data, and **spintax** for varying your own wording.

## The seven merge tags

Tags are lowercase with underscores. These are the only ones that exist:

| Tag | Gives you | Example |
|---|---|---|
| `{{first_name}}` | First name from the saved full name | Oliver |
| `{{full_name}}` | Full saved name | Oliver Clarke |
| `{{last_name}}` | Last name where derivable | Clarke |
| `{{headline}}` | Saved LinkedIn headline | Founder at Northbridge AI |
| `{{location}}` | Saved LinkedIn location | London, England, United Kingdom |
| `{{public_profile_url}}` | Public profile URL | linkedin.com/in/oliver-clarke-london |
| `{{day_today}}` | Weekday at send time | wednesday |

**There is no company or job title tag.** Where you want to reference a company, `{{headline}}` usually carries it, since most headlines read "Founder at X". Write around it rather than assuming a field that does not exist.

## Fallbacks

A tag with no value renders as nothing, which is how "Hi ," gets sent. Add a fallback after a pipe:

```
{{first_name|there}}
{{headline|what you're working on}}
{{location|your part of the world}}
```

Get into the habit on every tag. It costs nothing and it is the single most common cause of an embarrassing message.

## Spintax

Spintax gives Doreach several ways to say the same thing, and it picks one per message:

```
{Hi|Hello|Hey} {{first_name|there}}
{Worth a chat|Open to a quick exchange} {this week|next week}?
```

This matters more than it looks. Sending one identical string to 500 people is a strong, easily detected pattern. Three or four natural variations across your greeting, your transition and your ask produce a lot of distinct messages from one template.

Spintax nests, so you can combine it with merge tags freely:

```
{Happy|Hope you're having a good} {{day_today}}, {{first_name|there}}.
```

## Validation

Doreach checks every message as you write it and flags:

- **Unsupported merge tag**: a tag that is not one of the seven
- **Invalid merge tag syntax**: malformed, e.g. a stray pipe
- **Unclosed merge tag**: a missing `}}`
- **Invalid spintax syntax**: an unclosed brace
- **Empty spintax option**: a stray `||`, or a leading or trailing pipe

A campaign will not launch with these unresolved, which is deliberate, because every one of them produces a visibly broken message.

## Connection request length

LinkedIn caps connection request notes at **200 characters**. Doreach warns above **180**, because merge tags expand at send time and a note that fits in the editor can overflow once a real name and headline are substituted.

## Preview before launching

Every message step has a preview that renders against real prospects from your audience. Step through ten or fifteen. You are checking that fallbacks read naturally, that spintax variants all make sense, and that `{{headline}}` produces a sentence rather than a fragment.

## Common questions

### What merge tags does Doreach support?

Seven: first_name, full_name, last_name, headline, location, public_profile_url and day_today. Each can carry a fallback using a pipe, for example {{first_name|there}}. There is no company or job title tag.

### What is spintax and how does Doreach use it?

Spintax lets you write several wordings for the same idea in braces, like {Hi|Hello|Hey}, and Doreach picks one per message. It means a campaign to 500 people does not send 500 byte-identical messages, which is one of the clearer automation signals.

### How long can a LinkedIn connection request note be?

LinkedIn's hard limit is 200 characters. Doreach warns above 180 so there is room for merge tags to expand at send time.