Community Knowledge Base

Mailing Lists | Custom Fields

This settings page is only available to domain administrators, mailing list moderators and system administrators with the proper permissions.

Mailing Lists are a great way to allow users to communicate with a number of different individuals via a single email address. For a complete understanding of how mailing lists work, please see Mailing Lists Overview.

Mailing lists can utilize Custom Fields in order manage information about subscribers. When a custom field has been created, a value can be applied to a specific subscriber. Then, the custom field is used as a variable in a mailing list message in order to display that custom information about the subscriber. For example, if you'd like your messages to be sent out with the subscriber's first name in the message greeting (ex. "Hello John,"), you'd first create the Custom Field then add a value for each subscriber.

To create or manage Custom Fields, log into SmarterMail as an administrator (list, domain or system) and go to the Settings area based on your role. Then click on Mailing Lists in the navigation pane. Open a mailing list's configuration options and click on the Custom Fields tab.

Adding a New Custom Field

use the New button to add a new subscriber field. A modal window will display the following options:

  • Name - The name of the Field. Note: The text entered here is used as the variable when using custom fields in mailing list messages. For example, if you enter "First Name" in this field, you will need to enter #First Name# as the variable in the mailing list message.
  • Default Value - Enter the text that should be automatically entered for current and new subscribers. Once the field is created, subscribers can be individually modified to change the value. Note: If a default value is not included, and the subscriber does not have their field configured, the variable will be removed from the message, leaving a blank space in its location.

Using Custom Fields in Messages

A Custom Field can be used in mailing list messages as a type of custom variable. To enter Custom Fields as variables, the name of the field must be enclosed with a #. For example, if a Custom Field was created for "Customer Name", you would enter #Customer Name# in your message.