Fallbacks

Almost always, when you use a personalization tag, you'll want to provide a fallback value in case a particular constituent does not have a value for that tag, so that the email does not appear awkward

With the %%STYLE%% of tags, you would accomplish this by adding a parenthesis for what should be displayed for as a fallback value.

%%STYLE%% tags

Dear %%NAME(Friend)%%,

Personalized Result

Dear Jane,

Unpersonalized Result

Dear Friend,

Twig provides a few other options that, while slightly more verbose, are far more powerful in what they can accomplish.

The following are both equivalent to Dear %%NAME(Friend)%%.

Twig Fallbacks

Dear {{ cons.name | default("Friend") }}

Dear {{ cons.name :? "Friend" }}

Where Twig really shines is the scenario where you don't have a straight fallback that meets this standard. For example, what if you have prefix information for some members of your list with military titles and are in a specific group, and want to address them differently than you might other users?

Complex Fallbacks

{% if cons.prefix and cons.name and cons.inConsGroup(1) %}
 Dear {{ cons.prefix }} {{ cons.name }},
{% elseif cons.firstname %}
 Dear {{cons.firstname }},
{% elseif cons.name %}
 Dear Friend,
{% endif %}

Has a prefix and a name

Dear General George Washington,

Has a firstname

Dear George,

Fallback

Dear Friend

Because Twig is capable of multiple layers of conditions, it can accomplish much more granular and complex logical flows than the old style of tags were capable of.