In the previous post, I showed how you can manage your contacts via the Contact List. The Contact List makes it easy to display and update information for a contact who has participated in one or more of your mobile marketing campaigns. While a customer’s name, mailing address, email address, gender, and home phone can be very valuable to have, it is extremely likely that you will need to collect information that is more specific to your business. We understand this need, which is why we have added the capability to define custom attributes to meet the specific needs of your business.
The User Data tab, available under the Contacts tab, lists the data attributes that you can collect from your contacts. Out of the box, TextMe users are able to collect common data attributes such as name, address, and home phone. These attributes are listed in the Default Attributes section of the User Data page.
But, the real power of this feature is the ability for you to define your own set of attributes, and doing so couldn’t be easier. Clicking the “Add data attribute” button will reveal a small form asking you for information about the data you would like to collect. Simply provide a name, description, and data type for your attribute, and click Save. Your attribute is now ready to be used!
If we navigate back to the page where we can edit the details for a contact, we will see that we can now specify a customer number of each of our contacts.
After entering a customer number and clicking “Update”, we will now see the customer number listed in the details for that contact.
The data type of your attribute has an important role. It is responsible for validating data submitted for that attribute. For example, numeric attributes will only accept numbers, zip code attributes will only accept data that looks like a valid zip code, state attributes will only accept valid state names or abbreviations, etc. If you attempt to enter invalid data for a given attribute, you will receive an error. This data validation is also performed on data submitted via a SMS message (again, more on this in future blog posts).
There is no limit to the number of user data attributes you can define. And, the following data types are supported: Text, Numeric, Date, Time, Date and Time, Currency, Email Address, Phone Number, Zip Code, Gender, Boolean (true/false, yes/no), and State.
Using the User Data tab, you can lay the foundation to start collecting data that matters to you and your business. In the next post, we’ll see how we can collect data via SMS messages using the new, Multi-question Survey campaign.
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