Custom fields allow you to gather additional information on any subscriber in addition to their email address. This is commonly referred to as tagging a subscriber.
You can create unlimited custom fields in your FeedBlitz account, and attach as many custom fields to a single email address as you choose. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to custom fields and tagging, it only depends on your email marketing goals and how you would like to use the information gathered.
To create a new custom field, start by navigating to the Custom Fields dashboard from the Left-hand menu and selecting Subscribers > Tags & Fields.
Select New Custom Field in the upper right-hand corner.
Your custom field editor will appear as shown below:
To break down the editor, we'll go over each blank one at a time creating a custom field to tag the subscriber with a specific category of interest.
First is the Field Name. For this example, we'll call this field Interest, because we want to find out what blog post category they are most interested in.
The Field Value Type is how the subscriber will enter or choose their response.
- Text is to leave the answer open for the subscriber to fill in. This is great for collecting first names.
- The Choice options - list, radio and multiple - allow you to create pre-set choices for a subscriber to select. This is what we'll be using to tag new subscribers with their categories of interest.
- Date is simply if you are interested in gathering a specific date from the subscriber such as a target moving date for real estate or interior design professionals.
To discover the categories of interest for a new subscriber, we're going to use a multiple choice checkbox and list out the category options. The options we list will be the various tags that can be applied to the subscriber, depending on what they choose.
When you select a choice option, the editor will then change to this:
You'll notice we do not have any options available, so we'll create the following: Graphic Design, Web Development, User Experience (UX), and User Interface (UI).
The choice you list is what the subscriber will see, whereas the database value is how it will show in your FeedBlitz account. These can be the same for both blanks or they can be different as we show for UI below.
Selecting the tag also allows you to make any changes necessary.
Your tags for this field will be listed to the right, where you can rearrange if you'd like, and how they will show on the subscription form will be displayed on the left:
Up next is to enter the Default Value for this custom field. We're going to mark N/A for this as you'll see next, a subscriber is required to answer this question so a default answer is not needed.
To gather the interest of every new subscriber, we're going to make this a required field to be filled out in order to subscribe. This ensures we're gathering accurate data on our full audience and allows for better segmentation and personalization practices down the road.
If you were creating a field to tag a subscriber based off of an action they are taking - clicking a link in an email or opening a certain number of emails - or a specific form they're using, you will want to create a Hidden field in this case.
The UI Label is the prompt your subscriber will see before the choices listed. For this case, we're trying to discover what categories the subscriber is interested in, so we'll use the prompt of: What topics interest you most?
If you would like to create a Help prompt for your custom field (this will create a small blue circle with a ? in it) for your subscribers, enter the text into the Help box before continuing.
When you're all set, hit Save Custom Field and your new field will show on your fields dashboard.
You're then able to add this field to any subscription form or email signup page you'd like to start gathering information from your subscribers.
And that walks you through how to create a new custom field. As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. You can find all of our great support resources and how to get in touch with us via email, chat or phone on our Support Page.