What is a Custom Field?

Adding a Custom Field to your account, so that you can import more data, is only going to enhance the ability of personalising your communications, where you can then Segment based on data and even personalise your comms within the Editor based on their Contact Cards. There are two ways to create Custom Fields in NewZapp.

The Contacts screen

In the Contacts screen click the settings cog in the top right corner and clicking Custom Fields.

This is where you can then manage the data fields known as 'Custom Fields' that you're looking at importing along with the standard fields like 'Email Address', 'First Name', 'Last Name' etc.

Once you've added one into this area, you must ensure that your import of contacts has the headers matching exactly what your custom field says.

In this guide we will show you how to create, rename and delete a Custom Field.

First up, we need to know when you create a Custom Field, what type of data you want to save in it. This will be useful for you to consider before creating your Custom Field.

The following choices of Data Type are available:

• Text: any combination of numbers and letters.

• Number: any number, including decimal numbers. Note: You cannot use spaces in number fields.

• Telephone Number: any telephone number, including spaces and symbols. Note: This is type has a label purely for your convenience; behind the scenes this is stored as a ‘Text’ type.

• Date/Time: any date and / or time in the format dd/mm/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm. Note: Your data does not have to include a time, it can be date only

• Yes/No: saving data for this type you need to use yes or no, true or false, 0 or 1.

To create a Custom Field in the Contacts screen follow the following steps.

1. Click the 'Contacts' tab at the top on the Blue bar.

2. Choose ‘Custom Fields’ from the Cog on the top right.

3. Click on the option ‘Add Custom Fields’

4. In the dialog box which opens, you can now give the new Custom Field a name

5. You also need to select the data type (see above), from the drop down box option

6. Click the ‘Add Field’ button

7. Your new Custom Field will now be available as a data tag choice when importing data, as a filter name in the Groups and Segments tabs, and as a personalisation Field when you are personalising content in your email campaigns.

Through a Contact Import

When you upload a contact file into NewZapp, the system will match the column headers to to the fields that exist in the Contact Cards already (including previously made Custom Fields). If the field isn't recognised the file will look like this.

If you click the Exclude header there is an option for "New Field" and clicking this will open this screen.

Fill in this box and click Add Field and the columns will go white, with the new custom field at the top. From there you can import the contact file as you normally would.

Editing or Deleting Custom Fields

So now that you've created Custom Fields, what do you do if you want to delete them if they're no longer relevant? No problem at all. You just need to go back to the Custom Fields screen from the settings cog under Contacts.

This screen will show you all of the custom fields that you have set up and on the right hand side there are icons for editing and deleting your fields. Click the pencil if you want to rename or disable a custom field.

Alternatively, you can click on the dustbin icon to delete the custom field completely.

If you have any questions about Custom Fields, feel free to contact your account manager or send an email to support@newzapp.com