Including variables in a HTML email using PHP Mail

Does anyone know how I can go about including variables in a HTML Email sent using PHP mail.

I know how I can setup the mail function to send html emails and I have got that working fine. What I can’t do is figure out how to include variables within the message that gets posted.

The code below is what I send, it works fine but I want to include some information stored in some variables. For example I have the following variable $name , how can I include this within the message. I have tried adding it but instead of sending the value of name, it just send the text $name.


$message = '
<html>
<head>
<title>Birthday Reminders for August</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Here are the birthdays upcoming in August!</p>
<table>
<tr><td>
</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
';

I have done a search of the forums but I still cant work it out. Can anyone help me out here?