# Merge fields

Lets use the sample csv file with the data for merge fields

Name	Company	Mobile Number	Due Date
Bill Gates	Microsoft	+640211234567	19/04/2019
Tim Cook	Apple	+640217654321	28/08/2019

Assume that we need to inform Bill gates and Tim Cook about their income tax filing due date through an SMS. The easiest thing is to create two separate texts with their name and information.

An example text for each recipient could be

Hi Bill gates, This is a gentle reminder about income tax filing for your employment in Microsoft due on 19/04/2019.

Hi Tim cook, This is a gentle reminder about income tax filing for your employment in Apple due on 28/08/2019.

As this message is only for two recipients, we could just write the content. It is a problem when we need to send that message to more than 100 or 1000 users. One of the ways to solve this is using a template and value substitution.

# Template

When you look at these messages, the content is same for both the message. The things that change are name, company and due date. So if we could substitute these values to the text content, we could generate any number of messages. The values that we substitute in a text is generally referred to as a merge field. The content that has a text with merge fields are referred to as templates.

The template for the text that we would like to send would be like

Hi Name, This is a gentle reminder about income tax filing for your employment in Company due on Due Date.

The merge fields are in bold format. Now that you have the data and the template to send message.

How will you generate these message and automate the process of sending messages?

This is where Fridgedoor makes your life easier. Lets start that by creating SMS template