Custom Fields

Custom fields store information about your contacts beyond the email address: names, company details, locations, preferences, or anything specific to your business. You use them to personalise emails, to build segments and to map columns when you import.

Built-in fields

Mumara ONE comes with these fields, ready to use:

Field	Type
First Name	Text
Last Name	Text
Birth Date	Date
City	Text
State	Text
Country	Drop-down, with a list of countries
Zip Code	Text
Mobile	Text
Phone	Text
Fax	Text
Company	Text
Title	Text (a job title)

The built-in fields are shared by every Mumara ONE account. They show Assigned by Admin in the Actions column and can't be edited or deleted, but you can assign them to any of your lists.

The Custom Fields page

Go to Lists → Custom Fields to see the built-in fields and your own.

Column	What it shows
Name	The field's name
Group Name	The group the field is shown under on contact forms
Sorting Order	Where the field appears within its group. Lower numbers come first.
Type	The kind of field, such as Text Field or Dropdown
Required	Whether the field must be filled in when a contact is added to a list that has it
Created on	When the field was created
Actions	Edit and Delete for your own fields

Create a custom field

Go to Lists → Custom Fields and click Add New.

Custom Field Details

Field	What to enter
Name	Required. The field's name, shown as its label on forms and used for its merge tag. It must start with a letter and can contain only letters, numbers, underscores and spaces, for example Product Interest. It must be unique in your account.
Group	The group the field is shown under when you add or edit a contact. Click the + icon to create a group.
Field Order	The field's position within its group. Lower numbers come first.
Required	Yes makes the field mandatory when a contact is added to a list that has the field.
Type	The kind of field. See Field types.

Name and type are permanent

A field's Name and Type can't be changed after you save it, because merge tags, segments and stored values depend on them. Choose them carefully. To change either, create a new field and move the data across with an import.

List of Values

For Checkboxes, Dropdown and Radio Options, enter the choices under List of Values, one per line:

Software
Hardware
Services
Consulting

Commas aren't allowed in the values. Use a new line for each choice.

Assign to Contact Lists

Under Assign to Contact Lists, tick the lists that should hold this field. Your lists are shown inside their groups, with the number of contacts in brackets. Tick a group to select all of its lists.

A contact can only hold a value for a field that's assigned to its list. You can also assign fields to a list when you create or edit the list: see Contact Lists.

Assign/unassign to the existing contacts brings the contacts already in the ticked lists in line:

• lists you've just ticked get the field on every contact, with an empty value
• lists you've unticked have the field's data removed from every contact

Unassigning deletes data

With Assign/unassign to the existing contacts ticked, unassigning a field from a list permanently deletes that field's values from all contacts in the list.

Prioritize Groups

The Prioritize Groups panel on the right sets the order in which field groups appear, both in the Group drop-down and on the contact form. Drag the groups by the handle (≡) into the order you want.

Click Save.

Field types

Type	What it holds	Shown on the contact form as	Good for
Text Field	A single line of text	A text box	Names, short answers, IDs
Numeric	A number	A number box	Scores, quantities, amounts
Multiline Text Field	Several lines of text	A larger text box	Notes, addresses
Checkboxes	Any number of choices from a list	A set of checkboxes	Interests, preferences
Dropdown	One choice from a list	A drop-down	Category, plan, region
Radio Options	One choice from a short list	Radio buttons, all visible	Yes/no, small sets of options
Date Field	A date	A date picker	Birthdays, renewal dates
Json Field	Structured data in JSON	A larger text box	Data sent from your own systems

Prefer Dropdown or Radio Options over free text for values that should be consistent, such as country or plan: they're much easier to segment on.

Edit a custom field

On Lists → Custom Fields, open the field's Actions menu and click Edit. You can change the Group, Field Order, Required, the List of Values and the lists it's assigned to. The Name and Type are locked.

Use custom fields

In emails

Every field has a merge tag: its name in lower case, with spaces replaced by underscores, between double percent signs. For example:

Field name	Merge tag
First Name	%%first_name%%
Company	%%company%%
Product Interest	%%product_interest%%

Hello %%first_name%%,

We noticed you're interested in %%product_interest%%.

When the email is sent, each tag is replaced with the contact's value. A contact with no value gets an empty gap, so give important tags a fallback with a conditional tag:

[if:first_name]Hello %%first_name%%,[else]Hello there,[endif]

For content that changes by field value, see Dynamic Content Tags.

In segments

Custom fields appear under Apply Filters when you build a segment based on contact lists. The comparisons offered depend on the field type:

Type	Comparisons
Text Field, Multiline Text Field	Is, Isn't, Contains, Doesn't contain, Starts with, Ends with, and alphabetical ranges on the first letter
Numeric	Is, Isn't, Contains, Doesn't contain, Greater than, Lesser than
Checkboxes, Dropdown, Radio Options	Is, Isn't, with the values to match
Date Field	After, Before, Exactly, Between, Occurring after, Occurred before, For the past, Older than, Is today, Date of Month, Month of year

Birthday emails

Build a segment on Birth Date with Month of year set to This month, and send it a birthday offer at the start of each month. Or use Automations to send on the day.

See Segments.

In imports

When you import contacts, the fields assigned to the list are offered in the mapping step, and columns whose header matches a field name are matched automatically.

Delete a custom field

1. On Lists → Custom Fields, open the field's Actions menu and click Delete.
2. Read the check that opens:
   • If the field is assigned to lists, you'll see that it must be unassigned first. Tick Unassign this custom field from all linked contact lists and delete it to do both at once.
   • If the field isn't assigned to any list but still holds data, you'll see a warning that the data will be deleted too.
3. Tick I understand that deleting the custom field will remove all data associated with this.
4. Click Delete Field.

Deleting can't be undone

Deleting a field deletes its values from every contact. Before you delete it, remove its merge tag from your broadcasts and templates, and its filters from your segments, or they'll no longer personalise or match.

Good practice

• Plan before you import. Create the fields you need, and assign them to the list, before importing data into them.
• Only collect what you'll use, for personalisation or targeting. Less data is easier to keep accurate, and safer.
• Use drop-downs for fixed values so every contact uses the same spelling.
• Always add fallbacks for merge tags in subject lines and greetings.

Troubleshooting

Problem	What to check
A field doesn't appear when adding a contact	The field isn't assigned to the contact's list. Edit the list or the field and assign it.
A column isn't offered for a field during import	The field isn't assigned to the list you're importing into.
A merge tag shows nothing	The contact has no value for the field, or the tag is misspelled. Check the tag against the field name, and add an [if:…] fallback.
A field can't be deleted	It's still assigned to lists. Tick Unassign this custom field from all linked contact lists and delete it in the delete check.

Next steps

• Contact Lists: assign fields to your lists
• Contacts: fill in field values and import them
• Segments: target contacts by field values