Reserved Fields
Reserved fields come with the product. Every contact has all of them, in every organisation, and they cannot be created, renamed or deleted, which is why each one carries a Reserved badge and a lock on the Fields page. Only the value held against a contact can be changed.
They are listed in four groups, and the same grouping is used on a contact record. Each table below gives the readable name, as shown on a contact page, and beside it the raw name the field is stored under, which is the form the Fields page and the column mapping lists use.
General
| Field | Raw name | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| First Name | firstName | The contact's given name. |
| Last Name | lastName | The contact's family name. |
Both appear as columns in the All Contacts list, so filling them makes a contact easier to find later.
Identifier
These three fields are the identifiers. They are what distinguishes one contact from another, and one of them is what a message is addressed to.
| Field | Raw name | Holds |
|---|---|---|
email | The address an email campaign sends to. | |
| Phone Number | phoneNumber | The number an SMS campaign sends to, in E.164 format. |
| External ID | externalId | A reference to the same person in another system, for contacts tracked by an account or customer number rather than by an address. |
A contact needs at least one identifier. Which one a contact is listed under, and what a campaign needs before it can send to a contact, are set out in Identifiers.
Address
| Field | Raw name | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Address Line 1 | addressLine1 | Street number and street name. |
| Address Line 2 | addressLine2 | Unit, apartment or building detail. |
| City | city | Town or city. |
| State/Province/Region | stateProvinceRegion | The administrative area, whatever it is called locally. |
| Postal Code | postalCode | Postcode or ZIP code. |
| Country | country | Country. |
Address fields are not identifiers. They are held for reference and for personalising a message, so an email can quote a contact's address without it having to be carried in a file each time.
Additional
| Field | Raw name | Holds |
|---|---|---|
| Alternate Email | alternateEmail | A second email address for the contact. |
| Alternate Phone | alternatePhone | A second phone number for the contact. |
| Unique Name | uniqueName | A name for the contact where a first and last name is not the right label, for example a business or account name. |
Alternate Email and Alternate Phone sit outside the Identifier group, so they do not identify the contact. They are a place to keep a secondary address or number against the record.
Using a Reserved Field in a Message
The two forms of the name always mean the same field, so a column mapped against postalCode lands in the Postal Code field on the contact, and a variable inserted as postalCode resolves to that value when the message is built. Reserved fields work as variables in the same way custom fields do. See Variables and Default Values.
Where to Next
- Custom Fields. Adding fields of your own for anything the reserved list does not cover.
- Contact Records. The contact page these fields appear on.
- Contact Files. Supplying field values in bulk from a file.