Can you capitalize lead name token in email?

[Josh_Hill13]

I'd setup a data cleaning system as Kristen suggests. I like the scripting idea, but you really should have some bot running in your CRM to fix this sort of thing.

But honestly, I'm never offended if that happens - because it was me who did the lowercase 😉

[SanfordWhiteman]

I second Josh: if I lazily entered my name, it can even feel more intimate to have it left as-is.

Moreover, if this is lead-entered data, they know best how to spell their name.  You probably won't go wrong by capitalizing the first name (ignoring for the moment for the fact that the "first' name presented is the family name in some cultures).  But you can't just go capitalizing last names like "van Helsing" or "de la Fuente"!  Then you just seem culturally ignorant.  A data cleaning system can apply intelligence to this process, but it is not guaranteed.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

@Tyler G also, the correct CSS would be 

style="text-transform: capitalize;"

However, this will be rendered in Outlook Web Access as if you used 'uppercase' (don't ask me why -- 'capitalize' has no kind of security implication I can think of).  By contrast, it works in Gmail.  YMMV.

 

[Anonymous]

I like the way Aweber handles this, as it would be suitable to my ultimate goal. What Aweber does is allow you to select the token which runs the script to normalize title case on First Name, Last Name or FirstName/LastName in the asset you place the token within. That would work well for my requirement.

 

[SanfordWhiteman]

Before taking the risk of culturally inappropriate "fixup" I suggest everybody read this comment from a person who understands the issues:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-international/2011JulSep/0011.html

Quote:

French, German, and Dutch surnames among others may have prefixes like
"von", "de", and "van".  These may be separable ("van der Steen" is
alphabetized under "S") or an inherent part of the name, in which case
they are generally capitalized.  Getting this wrong may be insulting or
confusing.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for all the input and helpful responses. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with this question!

The CSS fix suggested by Sanford fixed this for me, however I'll have to look into the Outlook issue.

I'm using this for an autoresponder in an engagement program (thus looking for a more real-time solution) and want it to look more "personal" and less like an automatic canned response. I'm looking into Justin's response too, however I can't seem to find email scripts in the Tokens. We are currently using Spark which might be the issue. 

As for the cultural issues, we are only using first names so hopefully this doesn't become an issue. It's good to keep in mind though. It's never good to insult potential customers with our first interaction!

[SanfordWhiteman]

@Tyler I think you're right, Spark doesn't include "Advanced dynamic content."