Custom Fields

Custom fields are essential to personalizing your email campaigns, sending to segments—or groups of similar subscribers—and ensuring that you’re managing fewer lists in your account.

In short, any data that you collect along with your subscriber’s name and email address is stored within custom fields.

For example, imagine you use email to promote local events. You could store the subscriber’s city in a custom field, allowing you to send relevant events based on their location.

In your subscriber list, add a custom field for city. Create the custom field, name it, and then specify what kind of data field it is. In this case, City is a text field. Select visible to make this field editable by your subscribers in your list’s Preference Center.

You can use the following types of custom fields:

• Text: For values such as a city name, or a discount code.
• Number: For the number of purchases made, phone numbers, or ZIP codes.
• Multiple options (can select only one): For situations where a subscriber can choose one option in a list, like choosing their favorite color.
• Multiple options (can only select many): For situations where a subscriber can select one or more options in a list, like selecting what pets they have.
• Date: For storing birthdays, anniversaries, renewals and other important dates. These are very useful when creating date-based segments and using automation.
• Country: For a list of countries
• US States: For subscribers to select the US state they live in.

Every time you add subscribers with custom field data to an existing list, new subscribers will be added, while existing subscribers and their custom fields will be updated automatically. You can add and update subscribers by:

• Uploading a CSV or Excel file;
• Using an integration to connect another application, like a CRM or database;
• Using signup forms or a Preference Center, so your subscribers can self-update their information, or;
• Using Campaign Monitor’s API.