 can be used to repeat an email block based on personal client data, for example to show a list of blog posts or ecommerce products based on an array/list of data.

For-loops can be used to iterate through sequences of objects. They are most commonly used in email templates for rendering blog posts, ecommerce products, or purchase order line items.

To be able to use for-loops, your email service provider should offer a templating language with for-loop support.

The idea is that the block that you wish to repeat (for example an ecommerce product block), should be wrapped in a for-loop. Wrapping a block, means that before the block we add a for-loop opening expression, and after the block we add a for-loop closing expression.

The templating language used differs per email service provider, but for example the HTML when using the Handlebars templating language, would look like the following:

Wrapping a Tabular block in for-loop syntax

From the Layers menu, select the block that you wish to wrap in for-loop syntax.

In the Styling menu, click on the button for adding the 

 setting. This button can be identified by the icon illustrating a repetition by two arrows.

 item will be added to the Dynamic content settings. Click on this repetition item to open a popover where you will input the for-loop syntax.

in the first input, add the for-loop opening expression. For example, for HubSpot's HubL language this would look like: 

, where items should be replaced by the variable name for your array/list. With the Handlebars language it would look like: 

in the second input, add the for-loop closing expression. For example, for HubSpot's HubL language this would look like: 

. With the Handlebars language it would look like: 

Inside the block that has the repetition item set, you can access data related to the element being iterated over by the for-loop syntax. You can use it on the block itself and any blocks that are nested in it.

Please note that the template language used is only supported by some email service providers, however, the concept of how we show to use it in Tabular is applicable to other templating languages. We have listed in a table at the end of this article which template language each email service provider supports.

Say we have the following data that we want to iterate over:

For iterating, We add the repetition item to the Row block that we wish to render for each product in our products list:

 to reference the element being iterated over. In this case, we can use 

 to access the product price. We add these tags and mark them as variables using Tabular's variable annotation:

When we send this email with an email service provider that supports the Handlebar language, the resulting email would look like:

Substituting for-loop variables with client data

Each uniquely personalized email will need to be automatically generated and during this the variables used together with the for-loop will be substituted with 

This process of substituting the variables with the client data is typically performed by your email service provider (ESP). Your ESP should then also have access to that client data.

Some ESPs may offer functionalities to manually add the client data or they might collect the client data. Other ESPs may offer integrations, so that you can connect the database where you've stored the client data, with the ESP, so that the ESP can fetch the client data from your database. If you programmatically send emails using the ESP's API, most API's offer endpoints that you can use to send variable values to the ESP.

Another option if you have developers in your team, is to do this process of substitution on your own backend server, and then sending the HTML using the API of an ESP.

Email Service Providers that support for-loops

Most email service providers offer a templating language, see the following table that lists the most commonly used ESPs and if they offer for-loop support:

 can be used to conditionally show or hide email blocks based on personal client data. In the condition option settings you specify the opening and closing markup for 

You can include conditional logic in your email templates by using if statements or unless statements. To be able to use if statements, your email service provider should offer a templating language with if statement support.

The idea is that the block that you wish to conditionally show or hide should be wrapped in an if statement. Wrapping a block, means that before the block we add an opening expression, and after the block we add a closing expression.

In the opening expression of the if statement you add a condition, and only if the condition evaluates to true, the block will be visible.

Would resolve to the following HTML, when the email service provider substitutes the if statement and the variables with the provided values:

Wrapping a Tabular block in an if statement

From the Layers menu, select the block that you wish to wrap in an if statement.

 setting. This button can be identified by the icon illustrating a switch.

 button the condition item will be added to the Dynamic content settings. Click on this condition item to open a popover where you will input the if statement synax.

in the first input, add the opening expression of the if statement. For example, for HubSpot's HubL language this would look like: 

, where condition should be replaced with the boolean rule that will be evaluated as being true or false. With the Handlebars language it would look like: 

in the second input, add the closing expression of the if statement. For example for HubSpot's HubL language this would look like: 

Using HubSpot's HubL language, in Tabular this would then look like:

Using the Handlebars templating language, in Tabular this would then look like:

Substituting if statement variables with client data

Each uniquely personalized email will need to be automatically generated and during this the if-else variables will be substituted with 

Email Service Providers that support the if statement

Most email service providers offer a templating language, see the following table that lists the most commonly used ESPs and if they offer if-else support:

If you use personalization variables in your Tabular emails we recommend to 

 using our text editor. This is preferred because HTML reserved characters will not be replaced with HTML character entities (i.e. escaped). In some templating languages, the expressions consist of HTML reserved characters that will otherwise be escaped when our algorithm generates the HTML for your email.

Another benefit of marking your variables, is that you can annotate your variables with example/display values. Tabular will show the example values instead of the variables to you while designing in the editor, so you can get a realistic view of how your email looks after the variables are substituted with data values.

How to mark personalization variables in Tabular

First, add a text block to your Tabular email (for example, a button, heading, or paragraph).

Type your personalization variable expression in the text block.

Select the entire personalization variable expression, and the text editing toolbar will appear. From the toolbar, click on the 

The selected personalization variable is now marked as a variable. Optionally, you can add a display/example value that will be shown during designing in Tabular.

Say we have two personalization variables in a text block:

We can mark the variables by selecting each variable expression and clicking on the Variable button in the text editing toolbar:

After marking both variables, they appear as marked variables:

 value for each marked variable. When the text block is not in text-editing modus, the display text will be shown in the editor instead of the variable. This will give you a realistic view of how the email would look after the variables are substituted with data values.

2. Variables and dynamic content

Repeating email blocks using for-loop syntax

Conditionally show or hide email blocks using if statements

Marking text as personalization variables