> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.wegive.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Email Merge Tags Reference

> WeGive Help Center article: the merge tags available in email templates, what each one does, and when it resolves

## Overview

WeGive email templates (in both the BeeFree editor and legacy Stripo templates) use merge tags — placeholders wrapped in double curly braces, like `{{unsubscribeLink}}` — that WeGive automatically replaces with real, recipient-specific values when an email is sent. This page lists the most commonly needed tags, what they resolve to, and an important timing rule that trips people up: **some tags only populate on a real send, not a test send.**

## Compliance links

These two tags are the ones every marketing/newsletter email should include, and the ones support most often gets asked about.

| Tag | What it does |
| - | - |
| `{{unsubscribeLink}}` | Generates a working one-click unsubscribe link for the recipient. |
| `{{message_view_in_browser_link}}` | Generates a "View Online" / "View in Browser" link that opens the email in a browser tab. |

Add either tag inside a text/paragraph block, typically in your footer, and WeGive replaces it with the real URL at send time.

## Personalization tags

A few of the most common ones:

| Tag | What it does |
| - | - |
| `{{donorFirstName}}` | The recipient's first name. |
| `{{donorLastName}}` | The recipient's last name. |
| `{{donorName}}` | The recipient's full name. |
| `{{donorEmail}}` | The recipient's email address. |
| `{{organizationName}}` | Your organization's name. |

Many more exist for donation totals, fundraiser/campaign links, and household/address data — if you need one that isn't listed here and aren't sure of the exact tag name, reach out to WeGive Support.

## Important: "Send Test" does not resolve every tag

**`{{unsubscribeLink}}` and `{{message_view_in_browser_link}}` can both fail to generate a working link when sent via the editor's "Send Test" button — this is expected, not a bug.**

Here's why:

* **`{{message_view_in_browser_link}}`** only resolves once a message is actually sent to a real recipient, because it depends on a sent-message record (the "Outbox" entry) that only gets created on a real send. A Send Test never creates that record, so this tag has nothing to point to and will come back broken or empty.
* **`{{unsubscribeLink}}`** depends on knowing which donor/recipient the email is going to. A Send Test may not carry that context, so the link can be malformed or empty there too.

**To actually validate these two links, don't rely on Send Test.** Instead, use the normal send workflow and target only your own supporter record/email address. That creates a real Outbox entry with full recipient context, and both links will resolve correctly.

If a Send Test looks broken for these two tags specifically, that alone doesn't mean anything is wrong with your template or the platform — confirm with a real send to yourself before assuming it's an issue.

## Gotcha: an old "View in Browser" link can survive a template migration

If your email template was originally built by copy-pasting HTML from a previous email platform (rather than built from scratch in BeeFree), check carefully for any **hardcoded "View Online" / "View in Browser" link left over from that old platform** — it can look like a normal link and easy to miss, especially if your old platform used its own hosted viewer URL (for example, a link pointing at a different domain's own `/vo/` or "view online" path) rather than a WeGive merge tag.

A leftover link like this won't be replaced by `{{message_view_in_browser_link}}` — it's just static HTML, so it keeps pointing at wherever it originally pointed, and will return a broken/"File Not Found" page once the old platform account is gone. The fix is to find and remove that hardcoded link and replace it with the real `{{message_view_in_browser_link}}` merge tag.

**This is also a good moment to rebuild the template cleanly in BeeFree rather than patching around it.** If your account was originally set up on the legacy Stripo editor, migrated-in templates can carry other old-platform artifacts beyond just this one link. See "Migrating from Stripo to BeeFree" and "Recreate Your Existing Branded Email Templates" for the full rebuild walkthrough.

***

*Need help finding a specific merge tag, or troubleshooting a link that isn't resolving? Contact WeGive Support — the kind of case this page is based on was traced in minutes once we had the actual email template and generated link to look at.*


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.