Best way to fix the 'Dear [display_name} problem

Question

When supporters are emailed it would be more personal to start 'Dear Joanna Smith' rather than 'Dear Supporter'. Of course, sometimes we don't have a first name, and sometimes only an initial so using the tokens is tricky. How do people handle this in a) traditional bulk emails and b) Mosaico? Some examples would be useful

Answer 1

Greeting tokens can use smarty. You can set your default email greeting token at civicrm/admin/options/email_greeting?reset=1, and then in your mail use the greeting token {contact.email_greeting_display}.

So then you can make the greeting token something like Dear {if "{contact.first_name}" != ""}{contact.first_name}{else}Supporter{/if}

To update existing contacts you'd need to first change their pref to the new one you've created, using something like UPDATE civicrm_contact SET email_greeting_id=5 where contact_type='Individual', where 5 is the id of the new greeting, then run the scheduled job "Update Greetings" to update the greeting.