Custom Field OR Contact Field

[registration]

We want a custom welcome email sent when someone joins a mailing list. We collect a contact's nickname if it's appropriate (e.g., "Bill" instead of "William", "Sparky" instead of "James"). We want to use their nickname if it exists, otherwise use their first name. Is there a way to do this? I have tried inserting the nickname (it works fine), inserting the first name (it works fine), but if the nickname is blank, the only option I can find is [[custom.nickname OR "You with the smile on your face"]] which is not appropriate. How can we make use of the contact's nickname if it exists? I have tried many variations of the [[custom.nickname OR ...]] method but have had no success. Entering everyone's first name in the nickname field is NOT a work around.

[Zoe_H · Accepted solution]

Hello @registration,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community! I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but the only way to make this work would be to replace everyone's first name with the nickname if they have it. A secondary greeting is used when someone doesn't have a first name but we don't have the option to choose another custom field to replace the one that they didn't have. You can always insert both options in the email if you would like. The greeting tag with the first name along with the nickname custom field. I will definitely submit your feedback on this! Thanks. 

[CRECI]

I've very new to CC, so I'm not sure this is helpful. I did work out a solution to this in Excel. I added a calculated column "greeting name" using IF and ISBLANK to grab the nickname value if there is one, and the first name if the nickname is blank. For my CC contacts, I only need the greeting name in CC, so I upload this as the first name.

[registration]

Thanks. We handled this a while back. We have to have the member's legal name but can use their nickname in greetings, on name badges, etc. The result is that the nickname is now the Preferred Name and will be their legal first name or their nickname...their choice.