Custom Fields

Field types

Custom fields let you store structured, business-specific data on each subscriber beyond the default name and email. Mailrith supports seven field types — choose based on how you plan to use the data, not just how it looks in a form today.

• Text: a single line of free-form text. Use it for company names, job titles, referral codes, or any short identifier.
• Text area: multi-line text input. Useful for notes, descriptions, or longer free-form values collected at sign-up.
• Number: stores a numeric value. Good for scores, purchase counts, account age in days, or any metric you want to filter on later.
• Date: stores a calendar date. Use it for trial expiration dates, membership anniversaries, last-purchase dates, or event registration dates.
• Dropdown: a single choice from a predefined list. Ideal for lifecycle stage, plan type, industry, or region — anywhere a constrained set of values makes filtering reliable.
• Multi-select: multiple choices from a predefined list. Use it for interests, product categories, or content preferences where a subscriber can belong to more than one group.
• Checkbox: a boolean true/false value. Useful for opt-in flags, feature access indicators, or any binary state you need to track.

When in doubt between a text field and a dropdown, prefer the dropdown. Constrained values make segmentation, filtering, and automation conditions far more reliable than open-ended text that varies by whoever entered it.

Where fields appear

Custom fields are shared infrastructure. A single field can be used across multiple surfaces simultaneously:

• Subscriber records: viewable and editable directly on each subscriber's profile.
• Forms: add any custom field as a form input so subscribers can populate it at sign-up.
• Segment conditions: filter which subscribers match a segment based on their field values.
• Automation conditions: branch automation flows differently based on a subscriber's field value (for example, send one email to "Trial" lifecycle stage and a different one to "Customer").
• Email personalization: reference field values as merge variables inside broadcast and sequence email content to personalize the message.

Because a single field can affect all these surfaces at once, the Custom Fields library is effectively the shared data schema for your workspace. Treat it as infrastructure — plan fields carefully, because they are easier to add than to safely remove once they are in production use.

Create and manage fields

1. Navigate to Custom Fields and click Add field.
2. Enter a clear, human-readable label. This label appears in forms, subscriber records, segment filters, and automation drawers — make it understandable to every team member who will encounter it.
3. Choose the field type. For dropdown and multi-select fields, define the available options now. You can add more options later without affecting existing data.
4. Assign the field to the workspaces that should have access to it. A field can be shared across multiple workspaces if the same data is relevant across brands or clients.
5. Save. The field is immediately available in subscriber records, forms, segment builders, and automation conditions for all assigned workspaces.

Editing a field after it is in production use requires care. Renaming the label changes how it appears everywhere the field is referenced. Removing options from a dropdown does not delete existing subscriber data that used those options — but those values will no longer be selectable for new records, which can create inconsistency in segment filters over time.

Field design tips

• Prefer structured types over text fields when the valid values are known in advance. A lifecycle stage dropdown with five defined values is far more reliable for targeting than a free-text field where people enter "Trial", "trial", "On Trial", and "In trial" interchangeably.
• Keep labels short and human-readable. "Lifecycle Stage" is better than "Current Customer Journey Stage (CRM)". The label shows up in form inputs and filter dropdowns — brevity helps.
• Do not duplicate what tags already cover. Tags are binary, flexible, and easy to apply in bulk. Use custom fields for typed, structured data (a date, a dropdown selection, a score). Use tags for categorical labels that change over time.
• Do not create fields speculatively. Add a field when you have a specific use case. Unused fields clutter forms, segment builders, and automation condition menus for everyone in the workspace.