SimpleTexting's Custom Fields feature plays a key role in managing your customer data.
Not only does it give you enormous flexibility when it comes to collecting or importing data, it also lets you quickly and easily personalize each message in a mass text campaign.
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Get familiar with all the essentials and follow along with a step-by-step video on how to create custom fields.
What Are Custom Fields?
A Custom Field is a metabox that allows you to input data from a category, like first or last name, into a message for added customization.
In simpler terms, custom fields allow you to deliver personalized messages to each person in your mass text campaign.
Your SimpleTexting account includes seven default Custom Fields:
Phone number
Contact first name
Contact last name
Contact email
Note
List name
Birthday
Plus, you can add as many additional custom fields as you want by choosing from the following categories:
Text
Number
Date
Zip code (USA)
Zip code (Canada)
Phone
Gender
Website
We’ll show you step-by-step how to create a unique custom field and how to input these fields into your messages.
Creating New Custom Fields
1. Click Contacts on the left-hand panel of your dashboard, then Custom Fields.
3. Here you’ll see several fields which we include by default, such as First Name, Last Name, and Email.
If you want to add a new custom field, click New custom field at the top.
4. Let’s say we want to include a field called “Department Name”. In the pop-up, we’ll click +Text and type out “Department Name”.
5. In order to populate these fields with information, you’ll need to either use our data collection tool, import info, or add it in manually.
Now let’s put our custom fields to use in an actual message.
Adding Custom Fields to Messages
1 Go to Campaigns and click New campaign.
2. Start typing out your message and click the Custom field button.
3. A list of all of the available custom fields will appear. Choose the field you'd like to insert and click the plus sign button. In this example, we'll personalize the messages with the field %%firstname&&.
4. When you insert a custom field into a message, we'll replace the field with the corresponding info for each contact.
In this example, when the contact receives the message, they'll see their own first name where the field was place. Finish typing out your message. Insert as many fields as you'd like.
What happens if the first name is blank?☝️
When that happens the message simply leaves a blank space where a first name is inserted for others.
5. Next, choose the list you want to send your message to, and click Next. You can either schedule your campaign for later, or send it immediately.
6. And you’re done! Here's what the example message may look like on a contact's phone:
Hi there, Joe. The Marketing get-together is this Friday at 7PM. Hope to see you there!
SimpleTexting Tip — Max Characters☝️
SimpleTexting will adjust the number of characters remaining in your message based on the values you select in the Max chars column for each custom field.
Note: Only the date, date of birth, and phone number fields have a fixed character length of 10. Names and merge tags of custom fields have a 250-character limit. Once you create a custom field, you will no longer be able to change the merge tag.
Learn More
Here are additional resources to help you create personalized text campaigns.