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Custom Fields
Introduction
Custom fields are additional attributes that are related to each one of your subscriber. With the help of custom fields, you can store additional information for each subscriber.
Custom fields can be used for two purposes:
- Personalization of the email content
- Targeting your audience in email campaigns, auto responders, etc.
You can include personal information about your recipients inside email campaigns or auto responders. For example, you can add the name of the subscriber to the subject line or display the correct car brand image inside your email content based on the favorite car brand of your subscriber.
Custom fields can be used to create segments and narrow down your target audience. For example, you can send an email campaign to anyone who is interested in “Golf”. Targeting the right audience in your email marketing operations will increase the ROI of your campaigns.
Default Subscriber Fields
When you create a subscriber list in Octeth, a set of default subscriber fields are created. You can see the list of these default fields below:
- SubscriberID
- EmailAddress
- BounceType
- SubscriptionStatus
- SubscriptionDate
- SubscriptionIP
- UnsubscriptionDate
- UnsubscriptionIP
- OptInDate
The unique ID for each subscriber. Each list has a different SubscriberID namespace, therefore, SubscriberID #1 may represent different subscribers on different subscriber lists.
The email address of the subscriber. It must be a unique email address for each list.
Keeps the bounce status of the subscriber. It can be “Not Bounced”, “Hard” or “Soft”.
Keeps the subscription status of the subscriber. It can be “Opt-In Pending”, “Subscribed”, “Opt-Out Pending”, “Unsubscribed”.
The date of subscription to the target list.
The IP address used to subscribe the email address to the target list.
The date of unsubscription from the target list. If the subscriber is active, the value of this field is “0000-00-00 00:00:00”.
The IP address used to unsubscribe the email address from the target list. If the subscriber is active, the value of this field is “0.0.0.0”.
If the list is in “double opt-in” mode, this field stores the date of the double opt-in confirmation.
Custom Field Types
There are two types of custom fields:
- Global Custom Fields
- Local List Custom Fields
Global custom fields affect all subscriber lists in the system, regardless of the user or subscriber list. You can learn more about global custom fields in this article.
Local list custom fields can be created inside each subscriber list and it affects only the owner subscriber list. Local list custom field values cannot be accessed by other lists or users.
Creating a Custom Field
After logging in the user area, click “Lists” on the top menu and go to the dashboard of a subscriber list. On the left side menu, you will see “Custom Fields” link. Click this link and you will see the list of custom fields you have already created (if any).
On the custom field list, click “Create New Custom Field” tab and fill-in the form:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Name | Give a name to your custom field. Unless this custom field is shown in the subscriber area, the name will not be visible by the subscriber. |
Type | Choose the custom field type. Depending on the chosen custom field type, additional information can be requested from you. |
Default Value | Enter a default value if there’s any. |
Validation | You can apply a form validation to the new custom field. New subscribers will need to follow the chosen validation rule when subscribing. |
Visibility | If you make this custom field visible in the subscriber area, subscribers can update the value in their subscriber area. |
Make this field mandatory | If you check this checkbox, subscribers will be forced to set a value for this custom field when subscribing to the list. |
Force unique value entry | If you check this checkbox, subscribers will be forced to enter a unique value for custom field when subscribing to the list. |
Make available across all your lists | Once this checkbox is checked, the custom field will be available in all your lists. |
Below, you can see a set of example custom fields that we have created for one of our test subscriber lists:
These custom fields can be used for personalizing the email content, displaying a conditional content based on their values (conditional personalization) or they can used for segmenting your audience (ex: subscribers younger than 42 and from the United States).
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