This feature is in Public preview and therefore subject to short notice changes and improvements. If you have any feedback, share this with your Customer Success representative; we value your input.
By default, Dotdigital has three system identifiers that you can use to manage your contacts:
Contact ID: A numerical, system-generated identifier assigned to each contact at the time they’re created.
Email: Contact email address.
Mobile number: Contact mobile number.
Custom identifiers allow you to add your own identifiers to your account, and use them to manage your contact data. Custom IDs help you to identify and track unique people across all the systems that you use to store your data, as well as to unify data from multiple sources.
For example, you might want to use:
CRM ID
Shopper number
Profile ID
You can use custom IDs in the same way that you can use the system identifiers; to create, retrieve, update, and delete your contacts.
They’re available to use:
in tables and search fields in the Dotdigital platform.
in the Single customer view.
for CSV and XLSX file imports.
Contacts and Insight data API services.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
Email address, mobile number, and custom IDs must be unique values, and cannot be shared across multiple contacts.
A contact can have multiple custom IDs, but can only have one email and one mobile number.
It’s not currently possible to create a contact in Dotdigital identified only by a custom ID. Each contact must also have an email address, mobile number, or both.
Custom ID names have a limit of 50 characters, and custom ID values have a limit of 256 characters.
Support for custom IDs in our ecommerce and CRM connectors is planned, and work is underway.
You can provide feedback about connector support and use cases to your Customer Success representative.
Set up custom identifiers
Learn more about using custom IDs with the APIv3 in our Developer Hub.
Create a custom ID
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Custom identifiers.
Select NEW CUSTOM IDENTIFIER.
Enter a name for the custom ID.
Custom ID names can only contain alphanumeric characters, hyphens or dashes, and underscores.Select CREATE.
Delete a custom ID
Before you start
⚠️ When you delete a custom ID, this also deletes all associated values for your contacts. This action is permanent and can’t be reversed.
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Custom identifiers.
Find the custom ID you want to delete, then select the Delete (X) icon at the end of the row.
Read the information in the popover, then to continue with the deletion, type Delete into the text field.
Select DELETE.
The custom ID and all associated values are immediately deleted, and can’t be recovered from the recycle bin.
Use custom identifiers
You can use custom IDs throughout Dotdigital to view and manage your contact data.
In tables and grid views
In contact table or grid views in:
the Contacts area
lists
segments
marketing preferences
the Suppressions area
you can add your custom IDs to the displayed columns.
To do this:
In the grid view, select DISPLAY in the top right.
In the Table display settings side panel, search for the custom ID you want to display
Select the checkbox for the custom ID, then select APPLY.
The custom ID now appears in the grid view.
In search
You can search for a contact using a custom ID in the Contacts area and in lists, segments, and marketing preferences.
In the search bar at the top of the screen, expand the drop-down menu and select the custom ID name you want to search by.
The default ID to search by is Email.Enter your search value in the text input field.
Select the search (magnifying glass) icon, or select Enter on your keyboard.
In a file upload
Before you start
It’s not possible to:
use the same custom ID value for multiple contacts within the same type of custom ID.
For example, you can’t have two contacts with the same CRM_ID value.
overwrite a custom ID value through a file import.
You can include custom IDs as columns in a file import. Follow the usual file import process, and as long as the column names in your file match the custom ID names you created in Dotdigital, these are automatically mapped.
If auto-mapping can’t find the correct field, you can expand the Map to contact data field drop-down menu from the relevant row on the Data mapping screen, and select the custom ID to map to.
Learn more about file imports and the Scheduled contact importer.
On the Single customer view
You can view and edit custom IDs for a contact using the Single customer view.
To view a contact’s custom IDs:
In the Contacts area, in a list, or in a segment, use the search bar at the top of the screen to find the contact you'd like to view.
Select the contact's email address or mobile number to access their Single customer view.
In the top left hand side of the Overview tab, you can see your custom identifiers along with any assigned values for this contact.
To edit a custom ID for a contact:
From the Overview tab of the Single customer view, select the Edit (pencil) icon next to the contact name, or select the Data fields tab.
In the Personal details folder, under Identifiers, you see all of the custom IDs that you’ve created. Enter a value against the custom ID you want to edit or update.
Select SAVE.
In personalisation
Before you start
Personalisation with custom IDs isn’t currently supported for Liquid markup, in program webhooks, or in WhatsApp campaigns.
You can use custom IDs to personalise email, SMS and MMS campaigns, and surveys, pages, or forms.
Email campaigns, surveys, pages, and forms
You can use custom ID values in your email campaigns and pages or forms in the same way as you would use data fields.
This applies to the plain text version of email campaigns as well as the HTML version.
You can also insert custom IDs into the URL for an External dynamic content block.
Learn more in External dynamic content.
SMS and MMS campaigns
You can use custom IDs as personalisation markers in SMS and MMS campaigns.