Question
I have a custom field called "title" and I want to personalize the salutation in the email sent to my contacts as follows:
- If first name exists, then print
Dear [first]
For example: "Dear Mary,"
- If the first name field is blank, then print
Dear [title] [last],
For example: "Dear Ms. Richards,"
- If both the first name and title fields are blank, then print
Dear Customer,
How do I code this in my template?
Answer
In versions 8.2 and later, the following code will check your contact's data and then print the saluation:
%%concat titleLast $title " " $last%% Dear %%if first != "" then printdata first else if title = "" then print "Customer" else if last = "" then print "Customer" else printdata titleLast%%,<br />
The first line merges the values in the contact's title and last name fields.
The next line breaks down as follows:
- Print "Dear "
- If the first name is not blank, then print the first name
- Else, if the title is blank, then print "Customer"
- Else, if the last name is blank, then print "Customer"
- Else, if neither the title or last name are blank, then print the merged value of the title and last name
- Print ","
For earlier releases that do not support nested if/then/else use:
%%concat titleLast $title " " $last%%
Dear %%if first != "" then printdata first%%%%if first != "" then print "<!--"%%%%if title = "" then print "Customer<!--"%%%%if last = "" then print "Customer<!--"%%%%if title != "" then printdata titleLast%%%%if last = "" then print "-->"%%%%if title = "" then print "-->"%%%%if first != "" then print "-->"%%,<br />