Salutation First Name or Title + Last Name

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

The following code will check your contact's data and then print the salutation:

%%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%%,

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 ","