Single vs Double Braces

Most of the time, you can use single and double braces interchangeably on Sailthru. This:

<p>Dear {name},</p>

usually means the same thing as this:

<p>Dear {{name}},</p>

The difference is if you are generating blast content from a template. In this case, in your template:

• expressions in {single braces} are evaluated at generate time, just once overall
• expressions in {{double braces}} are evaluated at send time, once for each individual user

For example, let's suppose you wanted your email to contain the current date. If this is what's in your template:

generated on {date()}
sent on {{date()}}

If you generate a campaign from this template on July 27, the following will appear in your campaign's HTML source:

generated on July 27, 2011
sent on {date()}

Then let's say you don't send it out until the next day. Users will see this:

generated on July 27, 2011
sent on July 28, 2011

If you are reading a data feed and want to turn it into static HTML that you can edit before it goes out, you want to use {single braces} around the content that you want to be able to edit as static HTML.

You should use {{double braces}} around dynamic content like ads or sharing links that should render differently for every user.