Personalising content with a student's own details (dynamic text)

Overview

Vepple can automatically drop a student’s own details into your content, so a heading like “Welcome back!” can instead read “Welcome back, Sarah!”. You do this by adding a simple tag wherever you’d normally type text, and Vepple swaps it for that student’s information when the page loads.

This is a great way to make your experience feel personal and relevant, whether that’s greeting someone by name or referencing the subject they’re exploring.

Prerequisites

• Lead Capture must be enabled and set to Behaviour Tracking (so students sign in or create an account and their details are available to display). See How to enable Lead Capture for optimising Volume and Engagement Vs Behaviour Tracking.
• The fields you want to show (e.g. first name) must be part of your sign-up form. See How to add & remove data/user fields.

How it works

Wherever you can type text in the CMS, you can include a tag wrapped in double curly braces. The tag names the piece of information you want to show:

{{first_name}}

When a signed-in student views that content, Vepple replaces the tag with their first name.

Always add a fallback

You won’t always know a student’s details, so it’s best practice to provide a fallback word after a comma. Vepple shows the fallback whenever the real value isn’t available (for example, if the student hasn’t signed in yet):

{{first_name, there}}

• If we know the student’s name, they see: Welcome back, Sarah!
• If we don’t, they see: Welcome back, there!

Without a fallback, the tag simply shows nothing, which can leave odd gaps in your text, so we always recommend including one.

Which details can I use?

You can reference any field you collect from your students. The exact field names are set by your institution, so you may not have a field called first_name at all.

To find your own field names, go to Site Options > Lead Capture and look at the Field Name of each field you collect from students. Use that name inside your tag (and remember to add a fallback after the comma). For example, if you collect a field named first_name, you would use:

{{first_name, there}}

You can also reference what a student is currently exploring (their active personalisation choices), such as their chosen subject area, which is handy for tailoring messaging on the fly.

How to set it up

1. In your CMS, open the post, page or block where you want to add the personalised text.
2. In the text field, type your sentence and insert the tag where the detail should appear, for example: Hi {{first_name, there}}, here’s what’s new in your area.
3. Save and publish as normal.
4. Preview your experience while signed in to see the detail populate.

FAQs & Troubleshooting

The tag is showing as plain text (e.g. students literally see {{first_name}}).
Check the tag is wrapped in double curly braces with no extra spaces, and that the field name is spelled correctly in lowercase with underscores.

The fallback always shows, even for signed-in students.
This usually means Lead Capture is set to Volume & Engagement rather than Behaviour Tracking. Profile details are only tied to a student’s account in Behaviour Tracking mode. Check your Lead Capture setting.

Nothing appears where the tag was.
You’ve likely not added a fallback. Add one after a comma, e.g. {{first_name, there}}.