Contact Fields: Overview

This article explains the different types of contact fields, how to create new fields, and how to edit or archive existing fields.

Contact fields are used to store information about your subscribers, such as birth dates, age, location, email preferences, and more. You can create a variety of contact fields using several different field types, as explained below. You can then use the data collected in these fields to create segments or personalize email content. After you’ve created contact fields, they can be added to your signup forms and Subscription Center.

Contact Field Types

Field type	Description
Short answer	Entries can be up to 255 characters long; accepts numbers, letters, spaces, and symbols.
Long answer	Entries can be up to 2,500 characters; accepts numbers, letters, spaces, and symbols.
Numeric answer	This field accepts numbers and decimal points only. If a number is entered without a decimal point, our system will add a .0 by default. To make a numeric value negative, include “-” in front and it will import and render properly in the contact field.
Numeric answer	Use this field to store numeric values intended for use in segments or integrations requiring math. For numeric values such as phone numbers or age, use the short answer field type.
Radio button menu	A short list of options, where only one option can be selected.
Select multiple	A list of options, where one or more options can be selected.
Dropdown menu	A dropdown list, where only one option can be selected.
Checkbox menu	A list of checkboxes, where one or more options can be selected.
Date picker	Select a date from a calendar.
Postal code	Accepts numbers and text; intended for 5-digit US postal codes. Numbers are preferred for radius calculations. For international postal codes, use the Short answer field type.
State	An alphabetized list of all the states within the US. The full state name is necessary for segmentation purposes and they are displayed in a dropdown menu.
Country	An alphabetized list of widely recognized countries, displayed as a dropdown menu.

Creating New Contact Fields

To create a new contact field, simply follow these steps:

Navigate to your Audience tab.
Click on the Contact fields section in the panel on the left.
Click on the Create contact field button on the right.
In the pop-up window that appears, give your new field a name, then click on the Field type dropdown menu to select the type of field that you want.
If you chose a radio button menu, select multiple, dropdown menu, or checkbox menu, enter the options in the box provided. Options are limited to 255 characters each.
Click on the Save button.

Note: If you’re having trouble saving a new field, please refer to the section below about contact field names.

You can also create a new contact field while importing a spreadsheet. During step 2 of the import process, you’ll need to map the contact fields on your sheet. To create a new field, click on the dropdown menu that corresponds to the desired column and choose the Add field option at the bottom of the menu.

Warning: Once a contact field has been created, its field type cannot be changed. The options for a radio button menu, select multiple, dropdown menu, or checkbox menu can be edited, but the field type itself will remain the same.

Numeric Fields

Numeric fields should only be used for fields that you intend to do math with. In most cases, it’s best to choose the short answer field type instead of the numeric field type, even if the data that will be going in that field will be all numerals. Numeric fields only accept decimal points and numerals; they do not accept dashes (unless the dash is indicating a negative number), dollar signs, or any other characters. This is a common source of error when importing, so we strongly recommend that you use the short answer field type when possible.

Personalization

Once you’ve created some contact fields, you can use them to personalize your campaigns. Due to caching, new contact fields can take up to 24 hours to appear in the editor’s personalization tag list. However, you can still type it in manually and it will work without any trouble.

More personalization resources

Contact Field Names

Contact fields have two types of names:

A display name
A shortcut name.

The shortcut name is how our system identifies the field at a code level. When a field is created, the name that you enter is used to generate the shortcut name. Due to the nature of shortcut names, each field’s shortcut name must be unique.

Warning: Shortcut names cannot be reused, even if the original contact field has been archived.

When you create a new field, the name that you give it must be unique, since that’s used to generate the shortcut name. Once the field has been created, you can change the display name to whatever you’d like.

For example, if you create a numeric type contact field named “Customer Code”, that will generate the shortcut name “customer-code”. However, once the field is created, you realize that this field would be better off as a short answer field type, since you don’t want the “.0” that our system adds at the end of data in numeric fields. It’s not possible to change a field type, so here are the steps that you can take to fix this:

Click on your original Customer Code field and change the display name to “Customer Code (Numeric)”.
Save the updated name and return to the “Manage contact fields” page.
Click on the Create contact field button on the right.
In the pop-up window that appears, choose the short answer field type and name this field “Customer Code Text”.
Click on the Save button.
Once the “Customer Code Text” field has saved, click on it to open it.
Change the display name so that it’s just “Customer Code”.

Once these steps are complete, you will have a new short answer contact field with the shortcut name “customer-code-text” and the display name “Customer Code”. Your original numeric type field will have the shortcut name “customer-code” and the display name “Customer Code (Numeric)”. You can either archive your original numeric field or keep it active, whichever you prefer.

Note: Certain field names are also reserved for code reasons and cannot be used. For example, you cannot create a field named “Account”, since this has the potential to cause processing trouble.

Editing contact fields

As noted above, once a contact field has been created, you can’t change the field type or the shortcut name. However, you can change the display name and edit the options for multiple-option contact fields, by following the instructions below:

Navigate to your Audience tab.
Click on the Contact fields section in the panel on the left.
To edit a field, click on the field name. You can also click on the corresponding dropdown arrow and select Edit field.

If you need to change the name of a contact field to display it on your signup form, you can also edit the display name on the form itself, instead of changing the contact field name.

Updating Field Values

You can edit the list of options available for multiple-option contact fields — like the radio button menu or checkbox menu — however, it’s important to understand the possible outcomes of any changes you make. When you click on the dropdown arrow for a radio button menu, checkbox menu, select multiple, or dropdown menu field, you have two choices for editing the field: Edit field or Update field values.

If you choose to edit the field, it will bring you to the process described above. To use the “Color preference” example pictured above, let’s say your original option values were lowercase, “yellow, blue, green”. If you use this process to change the field values to title case, “Yellow, Blue, Green”, then it will change the field values, but only moving forward. It will not retroactively affect any contacts who have “yellow, blue, or green” in their field.

This is important because contact field values that are used to create segments are case sensitive. A segment created to group contacts who selected “yellow” as their color preference, would not include contacts with a value of “Yellow”. You can get around this by adding another rule to the segment so that both “yellow” and “Yellow” are included, but the person creating the segment would need to know that the option values were originally lowercase.

However, if you choose the option to update field values, it allows you to retroactively apply those updates to existing contacts. So a contact who previously had “yellow” as their color preference would be automatically updated to “Yellow”. To update a field’s values this way, follow these steps:

Click on the field’s dropdown menu and select Update field values. Or, click on the field name and click on the View edit field options button.
For each option, type the new value in the Enter new value box.
Check the “Update values for current contacts” box.
Click on the Save button.

To remove a value, click on the trashcan icon – this will also delete that value from all contacts who previously selected it. To add large sets of new selectable values, click on Bulk add values and paste the desired values in the box (this option does not backfill options for existing contacts). To add a new value, click on the Add new value button.

Conditional Fields

Conditional fields allow you to create a parent-child relationship between two existing fields, so that selecting a value in one field dynamically filters the options available in the other. It is compatible with dropdown menu, checkbox, select multiple, and radio button fields.

Creating a Conditional Field Relationship

Create two fields. They must be dropdown menu, checkbox, select multiple, or radio button fields.
Click on the Conditional field relationships tab.
Click on the Create field relationship button.
Enter a name for the field relationship.
Click on the Next button.
In the “Primary field” section, use the dropdown menu to select the parent field.
In the “Dependent field” section, use the dropdown menu to select the child field.
Click on the Save & continue button.
On the next screen, click on the plus sign next to a primary value.
Check the box next to each dependent field value that applies to that primary value.
Click on the Update button.
Repeat for each primary value.
Click on the Preview button to test your setup.
Click on the Save button and select Save & close from the list.

Viewing a Contact’s Conditional Fields

Click on a contact’s email address to open their profile. All of their conditional fields are located on the right side of the screen, underneath their groups and subscriptions.

Do existing contacts get updated if conditional rules change?

No, contacts are not updated retroactively. Rules only apply to new field interactions. Updates to existing records can be managed with the update field values feature described above.

Do conditional fields work with signup forms?

No, at this time conditional fields are only available through the user interface.

Can conditional fields be nested across multiple levels?

No, currently only one parent-to-child relationship is supported.

Archiving and Restoring Fields

As previously mentioned, contact fields cannot be deleted, but they can be archived. To do this, click on the dropdown arrow that corresponds to the desired contact field and select Archive field from the menu.

After you have archived at least one contact field, a list of the archived fields will appear at the bottom of the page. To reactivate a field, simply click on the corresponding dropdown arrow and select Restore field from the menu.

Reordering Fields

You can customize the order of your contact fields on the Manage Contact Fields page. To do this, click on the dots to the left of the contact field name, then drag and drop it into a new location.

The display order of your contact fields can also be changed through your signup form. However, any changes made to the signup form will overwrite the order set on the Manage Contact Fields page.