🗂️ Custom Fields: Create Your Own Data

Custom fields hold the details that matter to your business but are not a name or an email address: a company, a phone number, an affiliate ID, the size of someone's garden. Create a field once and it works across the whole Mailer.

Field names:

A field name is stored in a safe form: lower case letters, numbers and underscores only, up to 40 characters. Spaces and dashes become underscores, so Garden Size becomes garden_size and T-shirt Size becomes t_shirt_size. That stored name is what you use in merge codes and filters.

Five fields are always offered: product, source, notes, phone and company. Every field you add is remembered and offered from then on.

Creating a field during an import:

1. On the Map columns step of an import, open the dropdown next to any column.
2. Choose ➕ Add a custom field at the bottom.
3. Type a name in the box called Name the new custom field and press Add the field.
4. The new field appears in every column's dropdown at once, and the column you started from is set to it.

You often do not need to: any column the importer does not recognise becomes a custom field with the column's name automatically. See Importing Subscribers From A CSV.

Creating a field on a form:

1. Open Forms and edit a form.
2. In the fields table press ➕ Add a custom field.
3. Type a name, for example Garden size, and press Add the field.
4. Save the form. Whatever visitors type is stored on their subscriber record.

See Forms And Popups.

Fields sent by other tools:

When another site or tool sends a sign-up to the Mailer's sign-up address, any extra value it sends, such as phone or company, is stored as a custom field with that name.

Using a field in emails:

Type the field name in double curly brackets: {{garden_size}}, or {{custom.garden_size}}. Both work, including inside links. If a field has the same name as a built-in merge code, such as email or first_name, the built-in one wins for {{email}}, and {{custom.email}} still reaches your field. See Merge Codes And Tag Codes.

Using a field in the audience builder:

In Advanced filters, press + Add filter and choose Custom field. Type the field name and pick how to match:

• equals: the value is exactly what you type.
• contains: the value has your text somewhere in it.
• starts with: the value begins with your text.
• exists: the person has any value in that field.

This works anywhere the builder appears: broadcasts, segments and Always leave out rules. See Building A Custom Audience.

Using a field with AI:

The AI Segment Builder knows your field names, so you can write things like everyone whose garden_size is balcony and the AI uses the right field. See Segments And The AI Segment Builder.

Seeing and changing a field on one person:

Open anyone from the Subscribers screen with the pencil button. The Custom fields section shows every field with that person's value, ready to change. Press Save subscriber.

A real example:

Leafwise Gardening asks new readers what they grow. Anna added two fields to her Blog sidebar form, garden_size and favourite_crop. Oscar answered balcony and beans, and both show on his profile. Her newsletter now opens with Here is this week's tip for your {{favourite_crop}}, and she sends a balcony-only email to a segment built with Custom field garden_size equals balcony.

Tips:

• Pick short, clear names before you collect data. Renaming a field later means the old values stay under the old name.
• Use exists to find everyone who filled in a field at all.
• Custom fields are for facts. For things people did, such as clicking a link, tags usually work better. See Behavior Tagging: Tag People By What They Do.