Why you should enable HML in Pardot

In 2019 Pardot released a new merge language for personalising emails – Handlebar Merge Language (HML). If you haven’t enabled HML in Pardot yet, you should look to do so soon, I’m sharing some of the reasons why.

Get personal

The main reason for the jump to enable this feature in your org is to personalise your emails better than before. Salesforce Lightning Templates already use HML so this will simplify workflows. The new merge picker is super easy to use and will open up more fields for you to select:

Get conditional

This is my favourite part about HML – conditional merge fields! You can show default content when a prospect record doesn’t contain a certain value, using the HML conditional logic statements.

Format your merge fields like this to create your conditional content statements, for example:

Personalising emails should be a key focus for all email marketers, people now expect emails they receive to be tailored to them. HML allows you to do this in a super user-friendly way.

Get ahead

Future features are likely to be released with HML enablement being a prerequisite.  One Pardot feature that already requires this is Automatic Prospect Resubscribe, so do not wait around for long. The sooner you make the switch, the more ready you’ll be for new changes!

Some key considerations:

• If a prospect’s record doesn’t have a value for a field, nothing is displayed. To avoid empty fields, define default values for fields, or use HML’s conditional logic statements to create alternative content.
• If you specified a default value for a field and set up a conditional merge field statement, the default value populates instead of the statement.
• You can’t use custom fields that record and display multiple responses as HML merge fields. Those fields also don’t appear in the merge field picker when you build content.
• You can use a standard multi-select or a checkbox field as a merge field. The displayed value is the last value on that field in the prospect’s record.

If you’d like to know more or have some assistance with enabling HML or Prospect Resubscribe, then get in touch with our consultants.