Custom account field overview

ActiveCampaign provides standard fields that you can use to capture and store information about the businesses you work with, including Account Owner, physical address, description, number of employees, annual revenue, and industry/vertical.

You can also collect additional pieces of information about these businesses and store them in custom account fields. For example, you may want to collect data for "Customer since," "Internal ID," or "Blog URL."

All account fields, standard and custom, can be used to personalize communications sent to contacts and can be used in the segment builder.

Take note

You must be an admin or have permission to create and access account custom fields.

How to create a field group

Each field must belong to a field group. Field groups are containers for your fields. These containers are used to group similar fields together, making it easy to find relevant information.

Your account comes with one default field group: General Details. All standard account fields are in this group.

If you have custom fields that don't belong under "General Details," you can create custom field groups that make the most sense for your business.

With field groups, you can:

• Select which group a custom field should belong to when creating a field from the Manage Fields page or a deal record
• Drag and drop a custom field from one group to another
• Use the Bulk Actions dropdown on the Manage Fields page to delete selected fields, create a new field group from chosen fields, or move the selected fields to a different field group

Note that you cannot move standard account fields to a custom field group. These will remain under "General Details."

Create a field group

1. Click Contacts > Fields on the left menu.
2. The Manage Fields page will load. Click the "Accounts" tab.
3. Click "Add Group."
4. A modal window will appear. Type the name of the group into the field provided.
5. Click the "Create" button.

The new field group will appear at the bottom of the Manage Fields page.

Update field group name

1. From the Manage Fields > "Accounts" page, hover your mouse over the field group name.
2. Click the edit (pencil) icon.
3. A modal window will appear. Type the new name into the field provided.
4. Click the "Save" button.

Delete field group

1. From the Manage Fields > "Accounts" page, hover your mouse over the group you wish to remove.
2. Click the trash icon.
3. A delete confirmation modal window will appear. If you have fields in the group you are deleting, we'll prompt you to move those fields to a different group.
4. Click the "Delete" button.

How to create a custom account field

You can create an unlimited number of custom fields and organize them by field group from the Manage Fields page or any account record.

Once a custom field is created, it appears on the following:

• The Manage Fields > "Accounts" page
• All account records

In addition, you can use custom account fields in the following areas:

• In the floating segment builder
• On the "Add a Personalization" modal for campaigns and automation emails
• Conditional content (Available on Marketing Plus, Professional, and Enterprise)

Custom account field types

You can create a variety of different custom field types. They include:

• Text input
  This is a traditional text input field that stores a short piece of data that you or someone on your team would type—for example, a secondary phone number or internal ID.
• Text area
  This field type allows you or someone on your team to type multiple lines of text so you can store more data—for example, needs/opportunities, pain points/challenges, or background information about the organization.
• Number
  You can use this field type to store a string of numbers written in decimal form. Note that the numbers in this field can contain two decimal places.
• Money
  You can use this field type to store monetary values. In addition, you can select a default currency when creating the money field, and you can choose a different currency when updating the value of that field for a deal.
• Date
  You can use this field to specify a date, including month, day, and year. You can either type the date into the field or select it from a calendar. This can be used to collect a contract end date or the date the organization became a customer.
• Dropdown menu
  This field uses a predefined set of options that you or someone on your team can choose when creating or updating an account. You can only select one (1) value for this field.
• List box
  This field uses a predefined set of options that you or someone on your team can choose when creating or updating an account. To select more than one option, shift-click each value. 
• Radio button
  This custom field type functions the same as the dropdown menu field type—you can only choose one answer from a list of predefined answers. However, the visual representation is different.
• Check box(es)
  This custom field type allows you or someone on your team to choose one or more answer options from a predefined list of values.
• Hidden field
  This custom field type is a text field and is not visible to contacts when used on a form. You can use this to assign pieces of information to accounts when contacts submit your form.

Create a custom account field from the Manage Fields page

1. Click Contacts > Fields on the left menu.
2. Click the "Accounts" tab.
3. Click the "Add Field" button.
4. An "Add Field" modal will open. Type the field name into the field provided.
5. Click the "Group" dropdown field and click the group to which you wish to add the new field.
6. Click the "Field Type" dropdown field and click the field type you wish to create. You will need to provide answer options for the dropdown menu, list box, radio buttons, and check box(es) field types.
7. Click the "Add" button.

Create a custom account field from an account record

1. Click Contacts > Accounts on the left menu.
2. Click any account to open it.
3. Click the "Manage Fields" option.
4. We will redirect you to the Manage Fields page for your account fields. Click the "Add Field" button.
5. An "Add Field" modal will open. Type the field name into the field provided.
6. Click the "Group" dropdown field and click the group to which you wish to add the new field.
7. Click the "Field Type" dropdown field and click the field type you wish to create.
   
   • You will need to provide answer options for the dropdown menu, list box, radio button, and check box(es) field types
8. Click the "Add" button.

Update a custom account field value

Custom account field values are updated manually from the account record.

Any changes you make will not "save" as you go when updating field values. To save field updates, you need to click the "Save Changes" button. If there are any errors, such as a required field left blank, we'll display a message letting you know that the changes cannot be saved.

How to manually update a custom account field value

1. Click Contacts > Accounts on the left menu.
2. Click the account record you want to update.
3. Hover your mouse over the field you wish to update.
4. Click the edit (pencil) icon that appears.
5. Type or select the value you want to add to the field.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 above for each field you wish to update.
7. Click the "Save Changes" button.

Edit or delete a custom account field

You can edit and delete a custom account field at any time on the Manage Fields page.

Edit a custom field

Editing options available for custom fields include:

• Field name
• Personalization tag (used in outgoing emails to show field information specific to the contact)
• Group
• Answer options (list box, dropdown, check box, radio button field types)
• Default value (will appear in outgoing emails if a contact does not have a value for the field)

To edit a custom field

1. Click Contacts > Fields on the left menu.
2. Click the "Accounts" tab on the Manage Fields page.
3. Hover your mouse over the field you wish to edit.
4. Click the "Edit" option.
5. A modal window will open. Here you can customize the field's options.
6. When finished, click "Save."

Delete a custom field

Deleting a field will permanently delete any data contained in this field. Once completed, you cannot undo this action.

1. Click Contacts > Fields on the left menu.
2. Click the "Accounts" tab on the Manage Fields page.
3. Hover your mouse over the field you wish to delete.
4. Click the delete (trash) icon.
5. A modal window will appear. Confirm your decision by clicking the checkboxes and then clicking the "Delete" button.

Account field personalization tags

Personalization tags are used to insert contact-, deal-, or account-specific information into communications.

We automatically generate these tags for all standard account fields and all custom account fields you create.

All account field personalization tags will be prefixed with "ACCT_" to differentiate them from contact and deal field personalization tags.

To locate these tags:

1. Click Contacts > Fields on the left menu.
2. Click the "Accounts" tab.

You can learn more about using personalization tags in your campaigns, subject lines, and preheader text.

You can learn how to add a default value to personalization tags.

Using custom account fields

Based on your ActiveCampaign plan, you can use custom account fields for more than just storing information about your accounts. For example, you can:

• Use custom account fields in the segment builder
  All custom account fields you create will be available in the segment builder. You can use this condition to create list segments for email campaigns, "If/Else" forks in automations, set up "Split test" automations, update a deal or contact score, create Goal actions in automations, and more.
• Personalize communications
  Increase engagement with your campaigns and automation emails with personalization tags. When using a personalization tag in an email, we'll automatically insert the value of that tag once you send the email. When the contact opens the communication, they will see the value for that tag and not the tag itself.
• Use account fields with conditional content (Available on Marketing Plus, Professional, and Enterprise)
  Select which content block contacts should see in an automation email or email campaign with conditional content.