Customizing the salutation of a communication

All contacts have custom salutations defined for each salutation type in the system. You can view and edit salutations for an individual contact using the Display Name Editor content item on the Giving tab of their account page.

Viewing the Salutation options on the Giving tab of out-of-the-box account pages

To customize the salutation of your communication, do the following:

  1. In the email editor, select the Data Sources tab.
  2. Click Add data source.

    3. Viewing the Data sources tab of a new communication, where the Add data source link appears in the upper right-hand corner.

  3. Select the appropriate query. The following queries are located at $/Samples/Communication/Salutations:
    • Family – Returns the full name of the contact.
    • Formal – Returns the full name of the contact.
    • Household – Returns a default value of “The [LastName] Household.”
    • Informal – Returns an informal name or, if an informal name does not exist, a first name is used as the default value.
  4. Click OK, and then click OK again to add the additional data source. The additional data source is not added until you click OK.

    5. Clicking the OK button for the new data sorce after selecting the query and entering an Alias

  5. Click Save or Save as to save the change to the communication. By default, communication templates are saved to the $/Common/Communications folder in the Document system.
  6. Select the Body tab.
  7. Delete the default {#party.FirstName} parameter.
  8. From the Insert field drop-down, select the parameter that applies to your selected salutation query, for example:
    • Family - Family.Salutation
    • Formal - Formal.Salutation
    • Household - Household.Salutation
    • Informal - Informal.Salutation

    9. Selecting Formal.Salutation from the Inser Field drop-down adds the {#Formal.Salutation} shortcut to the body of your communication

  9. Compose or review the email content, and make sure to Save your changes. For more details about composing communications, see Creating a new communication template.
  10. Click Preview to view the salutations for each recipient and ensure they appear correctly.

    11. When previewing the communication, the recipient's formal salutation replaces the placeholder inserted in step eight.

  11. (optional) Click Send All Nowin the Preview to send the email communication. To review the status of your communication job, go to the Communication logs (Marketing > Communication logs). For more information, see Communication logs.