Thanks for your help Lorne, I was able to get it to work by properly formatting the placeholders as you indicated. Although it still gave the same error until I enclosed the entire message in quotes. So maybe this is a bug?
Here is what worked:
"${VM_NAME},
There is a new voicemail in mailbox ${VM_MAILBOX}:
From: ${VM_CALLERID}
Length: ${VM_DUR}
Date: ${VM_DATE}"