Liquid recipes for emails

These snippets solve problems marketers usually handle with Marketo My Tokens: tracking links, the current year, a safe greeting. Paste one into the email’s design, then change the field names to match your template. For the fields you can use, see the Merge field reference.

Tracking links

Build a campaign name for UTM parameters

Turn a copy field such as name into a lowercase, dash-separated value. “Spring Sale: 20% Off!” becomes spring-sale-20-off.

utm_campaign={{ asset.copy.content.name.value | downcase | remove: ":" | remove: "%" | remove: "!" | replace: " ", "-" }}

If your campaign names contain only letters and spaces, a shorter version works:

utm_campaign={{ asset.copy.content.name.value | downcase | replace: " ", "-" }}

The short version keeps punctuation. “Spring Sale: 20% Off!” becomes spring-sale:-20%-off!, which breaks in many analytics tools. Add one remove for each character your names use.

Tag the link by button

Use the button’s label as utm_content so reports show which button got the click.

utm_content={{ asset.copy.content.ctaLabel.value | downcase | replace: " ", "-" }}

“See the report” becomes see-the-report.

Add parameters to any link

A link might already have a question mark. Check before you add the first parameter.

{% assign u = asset.copy.content.ctaUrl.value %}
<a href="{{ u }}{% if u contains '?' %}&{% else %}?{% endif %}utm_source=email">Read more</a>

Dates and times

send.sentAt is the moment the email sends. Use it instead of typing a date, so a nurture email stays correct for years.

You want	Snippet	Result
Current year	`{{ "now" \| date: "%Y" }}`	2026
Long date	`{{ send.sentAt \| date: "%B %-d, %Y" }}`	October 26, 2026
Date and time in a time zone	`{{ send.sentAt \| date: "%B %-d, %-I:%M %p", "America/New_York" }}`	October 26, 11:38 AM
Month tag for reports	`{{ send.sentAt \| date: "%Y-%m" }}`	2026-10
Quarter	`Q{{ send.sentAt \| date: "%m" \| minus: 1 \| divided_by: 3 \| plus: 1 }}`	Q4
Seven days from send	`{{ send.sentAt \| date: "%s" \| plus: 604800 \| date: "%B %-d, %Y" }}`	November 2, 2026

For other days, change 604800, which is seven days in seconds. One day is 86400.

Count the days until an event

Subtract the send time from the event time, then round up with ceil.

{% assign ev = asset.copy.content.eventDate.value | date: "%s" | plus: 0 %}
{% assign sent = send.sentAt | date: "%s" | plus: 0 %}
{% assign d = ev | minus: sent | divided_by: 86400.0 | ceil %}
{% if d > 1 %}
  Starts in {{ d }} days.
{% elsif d == 1 %}
  Starts tomorrow.
{% elsif d == 0 %}
  Starts today.
{% else %}
  This event has already happened.
{% endif %}

Date math returns decimals unless you finish with ceil or floor. Without it, you can see “7.6 days”. ceil rounds up, so 7.6 becomes 8.

Find the Nth weekday of a month

Say your community meets on the 4th Wednesday of each month, and you want the invite to state the date without anyone typing it. Set the week number and the weekday at the top. The weekday is a number: Sunday is 0, Monday is 1, up to Saturday as 6.

{% assign nth = 4 %}
{% assign weekday = 3 %}
{% assign ym = send.sentAt | date: "%Y-%m" %}
{% assign first = ym | append: "-01" %}
{% assign w = first | date: "%w" | plus: 0 %}
{% assign offset = weekday | minus: w | plus: 7 | modulo: 7 %}
{% assign dom = nth | minus: 1 | times: 7 | plus: 1 | plus: offset %}
{% if dom < 10 %}{% assign dom = "0" | append: dom %}{% endif %}
{% assign target = ym | append: "-" | append: dom %}
Join us {{ target | date: "%A, %B %-d, %Y" }}.

Send date	After
October 26, 2026	Join us Wednesday, October 28, 2026.
May 2, 2024	Join us Wednesday, May 22, 2024.
February 10, 2026	Join us Wednesday, February 25, 2026.

The recipe finds the first day of the month, counts how far it is to your weekday, and then adds whole weeks. It works for any week from 1 to 4. Week 5 does not exist in every month, so avoid it. To invite people to next month’s meeting, start from next month instead of the send month:

{% assign y = send.sentAt | date: "%Y" | plus: 0 %}
{% assign m = send.sentAt | date: "%m" | plus: 1 %}
{% if m > 12 %}{% assign m = 1 %}{% assign y = y | plus: 1 %}{% endif %}
{% if m < 10 %}{% assign m = "0" | append: m %}{% endif %}
{% assign ym = y | append: "-" | append: m %}

Put these lines in place of the first ym line above and keep the rest. A send in December gives a January date in the next year.

Greet by time of day

Read the hour in the recipient’s own time zone.

{% assign h = send.sentAt | date: "%H", person.timezone | plus: 0 %}
{% if h < 12 %}Good morning{% elsif h < 17 %}Good afternoon{% else %}Good evening{% endif %}

If a person has no time zone on file, the hour uses the platform’s time zone, so some people see the wrong greeting. Use a neutral greeting for lists with many blank time zones.

Greetings and fallbacks

Fall back when a name is blank

Each default applies when the field to its left is empty. This chain tries first name, then company, then a plain greeting.

Hi {{ person.firstName | default: person.companyName | default: "there" }},

Drop a blank name from the subject

A subject like ”, your report is ready” looks broken. Print the name and its comma only when a name exists.

{% if person.firstName %}{{ person.firstName }}, {% endif %}your report is ready

Pull a first name or domain out of another field

{{ person.fullName | split: " " | first }}
{{ person.email | split: "@" | last }}

The first returns the first word of the full name. The second returns the part of the email after the at sign, such as acme.com.

Clean text

You want	Snippet	Why
Safe HTML text	`{{ asset.copy.content.headline.value \| escape }}`	”AT&T Labs” becomes `AT&T Labs`
Safe text in a link	`{{ person.companyName \| url_encode }}`	A space becomes `+`, `&` becomes `%26`
Address with line breaks	`{{ sender.postalAddress \| newline_to_br }}`	Keeps each line of the address
Shorten a long value	`{{ person.title \| truncate: 20, "…" }}`	Stops long titles breaking a layout
Change case	`{{ person.lastName \| upcase }}`	Also `downcase`
Join a list	`{{ asset.copy.content.points.value \| join: ", " }}`	Turns an array into one line

Merge fields aren’t escaped for you. A company name with an ampersand or a quote can break the HTML around it. Add escape to any person field you place inside text or an attribute.

Singular or plural

{{ n }} {% if n == 1 %}seat{% else %}seats{% endif %}

More than two outcomes

Add elsif branches, or use case when you test one field.

{% case person.lifecycleStage %}
  {% when "Customer" %}Here is your renewal guide.
  {% when "Opportunity" %}Here is a comparison to share with your team.
  {% else %}Here is how to get started.
{% endcase %}

Marketing Kernel

Platform

Enterprise

Settings

Liquid recipes for emails

Tracking links

Build a campaign name for UTM parameters

Tag the link by button

Add parameters to any link

Dates and times

Count the days until an event

Find the Nth weekday of a month

Greet by time of day

Greetings and fallbacks

Fall back when a name is blank

Drop a blank name from the subject

Pull a first name or domain out of another field

Clean text

Singular or plural

More than two outcomes

​Tracking links

​Build a campaign name for UTM parameters

​Tag the link by button

​Add parameters to any link

​Dates and times

​Count the days until an event

​Find the Nth weekday of a month

​Greet by time of day

​Greetings and fallbacks

​Fall back when a name is blank

​Drop a blank name from the subject

​Pull a first name or domain out of another field

​Clean text

​Singular or plural

​More than two outcomes

​Related articles

Tracking links

Build a campaign name for UTM parameters

Tag the link by button

Add parameters to any link

Dates and times

Count the days until an event

Find the Nth weekday of a month

Greet by time of day

Greetings and fallbacks

Fall back when a name is blank

Drop a blank name from the subject

Pull a first name or domain out of another field

Clean text

Singular or plural

More than two outcomes

Related articles