Create additional subscriber fields
While your subscribers' profiles contain only first name and email address fields by default, you can create additional fields for storing other subscriber information.
At Kit, we refer to these fields as custom fields, and they can be used to store subscriber information like:
Last name
Phone number
Favorite color
Here's how to add and manage custom fields.
Adding new custom fields
There are a few ways of adding new custom fields, with the main way being from a subscriber profile.
When you add new custom fields, they'll appear for every subscriber in your account. If you need to, you can delete custom fields from individual subscribers afterward.
From a subscriber profile
Go to the Subscribers page under the Grow tab in the navigation, and then click any subscriber on the page to access their subscriber profile.
NOTE: If you don't have any subscribers yet, add your email address as a new subscriber to your account so you can follow these steps. You can always delete your email address from your account later if you want.
Click the greater-than icon (>) next to Custom Fields in the left sidebar. Then, click the + button to add a new custom field.
You'll see a text field for the field name. Enter your desired field name, and then click Save.
The custom field will be added to every subscriber in your account. This is even though you added the custom field on one specific subscriber's profile.
You can then add text, also known as a value, to your custom fields. Learn how to update custom field values below.
NOTE: Custom fields that don't have text will be hidden in the # empty fields dropdown. Click the dropdown to reveal them.
Other ways of adding custom fields
If you are setting up your Form or Landing Page to display custom fields, you can directly create new custom fields from the Form or Landing Page builder's Custom field setting.
Alternatively, you can also create new custom fields when adding custom field-related steps to a Visual Automation (e.g., the Set custom field action).
Renaming your custom fields
Renaming a custom field means to change the name associated with it (e.g., "Last name"), but not the text it stores (e.g., "Jughead"). Custom field name changes will be reflected across all subscribers in your account.
To rename a custom field, open any subscriber profile and click the name of the custom field you want to rename.
Change your custom field's name, and then click Save to save your changes.
Updating custom field values
Updating a custom field's value means to change the text the custom field stores (e.g., "Jughead"), but not the name associated with the custom field (e.g., "Last name"). Custom field text changes will be reflected only in the subscriber profile whose custom field you've updated.
To update custom field text manually, open the subscriber profile whose custom field text you want to change.
Enter or edit the custom field's text, and then click Update Subscriber to save your changes.
Deleting custom fields
Deleting a custom field means to remove the custom field—both its name and its stored text—entirely. If you want to delete a custom field's stored text while still keeping the custom field, follow our instructions for updating custom field text instead.
When deleting custom fields, you can delete a custom field for only a single subscriber or for all subscribers.
For a single subscriber
To delete a custom field for a single subscriber, open the subscriber's subscriber profile. Hover your cursor over the custom field until the trash can icon appears.
Click the trash can icon, followed by Remove from this subscriber.
Click Yes, remove in the pop-up window that appears to confirm the deletion.
For all subscribers
To delete a custom field for all subscribers, open any subscriber profile. Hover your cursor over the custom field until the trash can icon appears.
Click the trash can icon, followed by Delete for all subscribers.
In the pop-up window that appears, type "DELETE", and then click Yes, delete to confirm the deletion.
Considerations for custom fields
Here are considerations to keep in mind when setting up custom fields:
Custom fields are not made for paragraph text
As a result, our Forms and Landing Pages aren't intended to be used as contact forms. If you need a contact form, try searching our Kit App Store for a suitable third-party form app.
All custom field data is stored as plain text
For example, while you can store dates in custom fields, these dates will be stored as plain text. Kit won't detect those values as dates, nor be able to perform date-based logic on their values.
Working with date data
Dates in custom fields need to be saved in one of these formats:
yyyy-mm-dd
yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM
Otherwise, date and time Liquid filters you apply to these custom fields won't work.
Each Kit account is limited to 140 custom fields
If you try to create more than 140 fields, you'll see a response of "400."