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Custom Fields
You can have up to 20 custom fields available per list, in addition to name and email.
This has been a very popular request amongst folks wanting to synchronize their favorite CRM software with their subscriber list, or import a detailed customer contact list into Email Campaign Tracker. So, we agreed - 10 custom fields just wasn't enough for what a lot of folks would consider standard contact information, let alone all the other details you may want to include in your subscriber list. Note that each field can contain up to 250 characters.
With 20 custom fields (in addition to name and email), there's lots of room to do some clever segmentation with your lists. Imagine... With all those fields, you can send really targeted campaigns, personalize your newsletters in wonderful ways and even create unique URLs to pre-populate forms on your site!
Date Custom Fields
Using the new 'Date' data type when creating a new custom field, you can send targeted campaigns based on say, your subscriber's age, when they purchased a product or perhaps when their warranty is about to expire. Plus, with 20 custom fields now available in your account, you can only imagine the possibilities! Lets briefly go through how you can set up and use date fields in your campaigns.
Adding a new date field to your subscriber list
To create a new date custom field for in Email Campaign Tracker, go to your subscriber list and click on 'Custom fields' in the right-hand column. Lets call this field something meaningful, like 'Birthday':
Click the 'Add Custom Field' button to save your new date field. Now you'll be able to import dates into your subscriber list from a file, or manually add them into that field by clicking on any email address in your list. If 'This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center' is checked, then you can also get your subscribers to update their details via your preference center!
What can I do with these date fields?
Using dates in your custom fields, you can create all sorts of interesting segmented campaigns based on birthdate, purchase date, last visit to the doctor - you name it!
Lets assume that you've updated your subscriber list with the birthdates of your subscribers, using a field called "Birthday". Now, say that you want to send a youth-oriented newsletter to subscribers aged 18-24 years of age. To create a segment for these folks, simply go back into your subscriber list, click 'Segments' in the right-hand column, then create a new segment. Lets call this one, "18-24 years of age". Create your first rule based on your new "Birthday" field and click, 'Add rule'.
For the first rule in the segment, we need to specify that our subscribers are older than 18 years of age. So, "Birthday" will be less than "19 Jul 1992": (this date is based on the date this content was posted)
Now we're going to set an upper-age of 24. Using the drop-down below, we'll add another "and" rule based on "Birthday". This time, it will be "Birthday" is greater than "19 Jul 1986": (this date is based on the date this content was posted)
Click 'Save and refresh count'. We're done creating this segment and ready to create a campaign that's relevant to folks in this age bracket!
How do I collect dates from my subscribers?
We've made it really easy to collect dates from your subscribers, via your subscribe forms and the preference center. To create a new subscribe form that includes drop-down lists for entering dates, simply go into your subscriber list and click, 'Create a subscribe form'. Make sure your date field(s) are ticked, then 'Generate the code'. Once you've tweaked the supplied code to taste, you should get a form like this:
Subscribers can also update their own date fields via your preference center. Once you've created a date custom field or two with "This field should be visible to recipients when they edit their settings in the preference center" ticked, simply add the <preferences> template tag to your email campaigns!
Smart Ways You Can Use Custom Fields
At their most basic, custom fields can be a great way to capture and store additional information about your subscribers. You might have a subscribe form on your website that also asks your visitors about their specific interests, and pass that information back to your own database.
Today we'll mention some of the cooler ways you can make use of those 20 extra fields in your actual email campaigns.
Custom images
This is something that can make your emails look really varied, but is actually quite simple. If you'd like to show different images to different subscribers, you can use the value of a custom field right inside an image link. For example, a car dealership could insert a photo of the specific model each customer has expressed interest in.
To make it happen, first you need the actual data in your custom field. In this example, a subscriber might have a field called 'favcar' with a value of 'datsunsunny'. To turn that into a picture of said Datsun, your HTML would look like this:
<img src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/[favcar,fallback=genericcar].jpg" alt="A photo of your favourite car" width="150" height="100" cm_dontimportimage >
When our Datsun lover opens his copy of your email, the image path will become /images/datsunsunny.jpg. If a recipient has not specified a favourite car, then the fallback image will be shown instead. Note the cm_dontimportimage attribute there. That stops Email Campaign Tracker from trying to import the custom image along with all your other images. Instead, it is referenced from your own server.
There's a lot of ways you might use custom images to make your emails even more targeted to each reader.
Unique URLs
Do you have customer IDs which you would like to pass from your email through to your website? You could store those IDs in a custom field, and then insert them into a link as a parameter. Just like the custom images above, it's a simple matter of using the correct tag inside the link.
<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/login.php?user=[id,fallback=]">Login to your account</a>
Custom permission reminders
One of the best ways to avoid spam complaints is to remind your readers how and where they signed up to your list. You might have a list that people always join via a single form, and in that case it is very easy to write a simple permission reminder. On the other hand, you might sign people up online, in your store, at a tradeshow, on the street...that can be hard to explain in a simple way.
If you plan ahead, you can store the source of each signup in a custom field, and then use that field to construct custom permission reminders.
Add a personal connection
A very common use of email newsletters is for sales people to keep in touch with their customers and potential customers. Often all the sales people at a particular organization are sending out the same newsletter. By using a custom field to store the name of the sales person for each subscriber, head office can send one campaign, but still have each email refer to the relevant contact for the recipient.
That might mean inserting the sales person's name in the footer, their contact details or even using the custom images we've discussed above to add their photo. It's a simple way to create a more valuable email.
Coupon codes
Sure you can send a campaign out to all your subscribers offering a discount with a single code, and that would work great, but what if you wanted to know exactly who responded, and who sent their code on to others? A custom field with a unique coupon code could be your answer. You insert the code into the email, and then you have a neat way of tracking back to find out which customer was most enthusiastic, who forwarded it on to their friends, and so on.
That's just a few of the ways you could be using your custom fields to create more targeted and valuable email campaigns. Remember that every list can have up to 20 custom fields, and in each field you can have up to 250 characters of data.
