$ man merge-fields

Merge Fields

Placeholders in email templates that get replaced with actual data when the email sends. {first_name}, {company_name}, {icebreaker}.

Merge fields turn one template into 1,000 personalized emails. You write the structure once. The platform fills in the variables per contact. Without merge fields, you're copy-pasting names manually. With them, you're running campaigns at scale.

Every campaign I build has 4-6 merge fields. {first_name} and {company_name} come from Clay enrichment. {icebreaker} and {pain_point} come from a Clay research prompt I write specifically for that campaign. The prompt embeds the full email bodies so the AI knows where the variables land and writes them to fit naturally in context. Merge fields aren't magic — they're only as good as the data and prompts that generate them.