You can optimize your contact management strategy by understanding the differences between custom fields and tags, upload limits, and handling subscription status. A suitable contact organization helps ensure that your email campaigns reach the right audience segments while maintaining data quality and compliance standards.
Effective contact management enables more targeted email marketing by organizing subscriber data for better segmentation and personalization. When properly configured, a strategic contact organization can enhance campaign effectiveness by ensuring accurate data collection and subscriber status tracking throughout your Marketing Cloud account.
Q1) What is the difference between a "Custom Field" and a "Contact Tag"?
Custom fields are mutually exclusive and overwrite the previous value; thus, they tend to make more sense for values that contacts can only have one of (e.g., birthday/first name). Tags can be stacked onto a user record and are good for showing interests or personality types.
Q2) How many custom fields can I have?
Essentials | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|
50 | 100 | 150 |
Q3) How to upload unsubscribed contacts?
When you are uploading a CSV with a "status" column, you must map the field to "subscription." Any blanks or "S" will be subscribed. "U" will be uploaded as unsubscribed.
Please see the image below for reference:
Please be sure to map the status field on the field mapping page (see image below)
