Personalization Variables for Handwritten Mail: How Placeholders Work | Handwrite Help Center

Personalization is where a bulk mailing starts to feel like a real one-to-one gesture. In Handwrite, placeholders inside your message template are resolved per recipient before the card is written.

If you are comparing ways to personalize handwritten mail, the most reliable approach is to keep the variable set small and use placeholders only where they make the message feel more specific, not more robotic.

Supported placeholders

These placeholders are currently supported in message text:

Placeholder	What it inserts	Notes
`\{greeting\}`	A generated greeting	Uses pronoun setting and optional gender information
`\{firstName\}`	Recipient first name	Best when your CSV includes `firstname`
`\{lastName\}`	Recipient last name	Useful for formal greetings or surnames
`\{fullName\}`	Full recipient name	Built from first + last name when available
`\{company\}`	Your company name	Pulled from your sender/account context
`\{companyName\}`	Your company name	Same output as `\{company\}`

Placeholders are lowercase

The placeholders are case-sensitive and should be written exactly as shown above. For example:

Use \{firstName\}
Not \{FirstName\}
Not \{Name\}
Not \{City\}

Writing effective personalized messages

Keep it natural — Write as you would speak
Use one or two placeholders well — Usually enough to make the card feel personal
Stay concise — Shorter messages generally feel more credible in handwriting
Preview before checkout — Especially when using \{greeting\} or formal German phrasing
Include matching CSV columns — \{firstName\} cannot resolve if firstname is missing

Best uses for placeholders

Warm openings — \{greeting\} is strongest at the start of the message.
Simple first-name personalization — \{firstName\} works well for thank-you notes and follow-up cards.
Formal outreach — surname-based greetings work better when you are writing in a more traditional tone.
Light company branding — \{company\} helps sign off without making the message feel templated.

Example templates

Warm thank-you

\{greeting\}, thank you for your trust. It means a lot to us. Warm regards, \{company\}

Simple business follow-up

Dear \{firstName\}, thank you for the conversation. We appreciated the time and wanted to follow up personally. Best, \{company\}

Formal German note

\{greeting\}, vielen Dank fur Ihr Vertrauen. Wir freuen uns auf die weitere Zusammenarbeit. Herzliche Grusse, \{company\}

Formality: Du vs. Sie

For German-language cards, you can choose between informal (Du) and formal (Sie) address. This matters most when using \{greeting\}:

Du produces a first-name greeting
Sie produces a formal surname-based greeting

If you use \{greeting\}, adding gender and lastname in the CSV improves the result.

What is not supported yet

At the moment, Handwrite does not support arbitrary custom placeholders in the message body. That means values like \{city\}, \{orderNumber\}, \{milestone\}, or \{productName\} are not automatically resolved.

If you need message variants by segment, the safer workflow is to split the list into smaller batches and use one message template per segment.

Need help?

If you want a second pair of eyes on a message template before you send a larger campaign, contact our support team. We can quickly tell you whether the placeholders and tone are likely to work well.