How do I add a salutation to my email?

You can include a salutation, e.g. Dear, Estimado/Estimada, Sehr geehrter/Sehr geehrte, to greet your contacts in any emails you send.

If you can use the same salutation for all recipients of the email, add the text directly into the content of the email. For example:

If you want to use different salutations depending on the person receiving the email, use a custom Contact Field and its associated merge field.

These steps are required:

• Create a custom Contact Field to hold the salutation for contacts (this is not included in ZiftONE as a default). When you create a custom field, a merge field is generated at the same time. Merge fields are placeholders for information that can be different for each contact - when they're included in an email, they generate the actual value dynamically based on each recipient of the email. 

  Users with the Administrator role can create custom Contact Fields.

• Include a value for the salutation for all your contacts.
• Add the merge field that represents the salutation to the email. The actual value for the merge field will be populated when the email is sent to contacts who have the salutation value in their profile. 

Contents

Click on the + for more information

Create a Custom Contact Field

Users with the Administrator role can create custom Contact Fields.

1. Navigate to > Settings.
2. Select Contact Fields from the left-hand sidebar. The page shows any existing custom Contact Fields and their associated merge field label.

   For a list of ZiftONE's default contact fields and their associated merge fields, see Default Merge Fields for Contact Lists.

3. Click New Contact Field.
4. Specify a Name for the field, for example Salutation. This must be unique and must not match the name of any ZiftONE default contact merge field.
5. Select the field type Text.

6. Click Save. The new field is added to the Contact Fields list, along with its default merge field label (in the form z123_contact field name).

   

For more information about custom Contact Fields, see Contact Fields.

Add Data for the Custom Contact Field

To have the merge field representing salutation populated with data when the email is sent, the target contacts must have a value for Salutation in their profile.

Once you've added the custom Contact Field to ZiftONE, it will be available for population when you add a new contact.

You have two options for updating existing contacts with a value for the new field:

• Update each individual contact manually

  1. Navigate to your Contacts page and find the contact you want to update.
  2. Click on the contact to open it for edit.
  3. Click Edit Details.
  4. Add the data to the Salutation field, then click Save.

  

• Upload a file that includes the new value for each contact, to update all the contacts in a bulk operation.

  1. Navigate to your Contacts page
  2. Click Add Contacts > File Import.
  3. Upload the file that includes the information for the contacts you want to update. If the uploaded file includes an email address that already exists in ZiftONE as a contact, the existing contact will be updated with the information included in the file. 

For more information about both methods, see Contacts.

Add the Custom Contact Field to the Email

When personalizing the content of an email, include the custom field's merge field label in square brackets, for example [z123_Salutation]. Ensure that you enter the merge field label exactly as it's shown in the Contact Fields screen, including the z123_ prefix. See Create a Custom Contact Field for more information.

Note

Merge fields don't display actual data in test emails. They get populated with the information for each contact when the email is sent to your contact list.

For more information about emails, see Manage Emails.