The most commonly used merge field in PowerMail is First name ("Dear [FNAME]"). But what if you have two names in a record, such as for married couples or domestic partners? How to address them both? Your first thought might be to use "Dear [FNAME] and [FNAME2]". That will look fine for records with 2 names, but you will get, for example, "Dear John and Friend" for records that don't have a second name.
This is where salutations can come in handy. For member records that have 2 names, you can enter something like "John and Jane" in Salutation 1 in their member record, and then use Salutation 1 ("Dear [SALUTATION1]") as your PowerMail greeting. For members having a value in Salutation 1, that will be merged in. For member records that don't have Salutation 1 but do have a first name, the first name will be merged in. Finally, if there's no Salutation 1, and no first name, "Friend" will be merged in. To summarize, Salutation 1 will merge in the first value it finds in the following order:
1. Salutation 1
2. First name of the 1st person on the member record
3. "Friend"
It gets even richer with Salutation 2 ("Dear [SALUTATION2"]). With this greeting it will merge in the first value it finds in the following order:
1. Salutation 2
2. First name of the 2nd person on the member record
3. Salutation 1
4. First name of the 1st person on the member record
5. "Friend"
To add a salutation, click on the spot you would like it in your PowerMail and select one of 2 salutations from the 'Merge Fields' dropdown
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