Mailchimp: how to show an article if user has no preferences

Question

Is something like this not possible with a wildcard? I'm trying to send an article to people who do not have any preferences, and if they do have preferences don't show it. I cannot find any documentation on it.

Thanks in advance

*The star means all groups

*|INTERESTED:*|*

   //Do nothing

*|ELSE:|*

  //Show all

*|END:INTERESTED:|*

Answer 1

No, MailChimp's conditional merge tags don't support wildcards inside of those merge tags.

If the end goal is to show X content to subscribers who have no group affiliations and show Y content to subscribers who have any group affiliations, there are a few ways to accomplish this.

a) You can use *|INTERESTED:GroupTitle:GroupName1,GroupName2,GroupName3|*, etc. to show content to any members of those 3 groups. If you have more than that, of course, just add all of your groups in there with that comma-seperated format. Then, use the *|ELSE:|* as you already are in your example to account for people who aren't tied to any of those groups. This can be tedious though if you have a ton of groups.

b) Consider sending two separate campaigns, each set to send to a segment of your list that targets based on group affiliations (or non-affiliations).

sources:

http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-do-i-use-smart-merge-tags-with-groups/ http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-can-i-send-to-a-segment-of-my-list/