Best way to collect multiple values within one field in Marketing Cloud: profile

[Former Member]

Hi guys,

What is the best way to collect multiple values within just 1 profile property in Marketing Cloud? What kind of field type do you have to choose? For example profile property: interests could be Football AND Basketball AND Hockey.

[SCHNEIDERT]

Hi Andy,

unfortunately as per my knowledge there's still no way to create a multi-select Custom Field in SAP Marketing Cloud. I'm also waiting for this for a long time.

I think the only way for Contacts is the standard field Marketing Attribute where you can store more multiple values separated by comma (assuming creating a custom text-field and store the values comma-separated is not a real option for you).

BR Tobias

[Former Member]

Hi andyberendsen8. As Tobias said, a suitable option for this could be Marketing Attributes.

Another option could be a specific interaction type (example: Interest Submission), and assign one or more items of interest to that interaction when you load it. That will give you the ability to add up values without losing information, and it's standard in the segmentation modeling app.

Let me know if you need help to accomplish these. Regards,

[SCHNEIDERT]

Hi Andy,

it is. Maybe you can open an Improvement Request on this topic if there isn't anyone yet?

Hope I got all your questions. So:

1. If you would use a custom text field and do a csv-import, you have to provide all the needed values. It is not an update on the field. So if a contact already has interests Volleyball and Basketball and you provide only Fishing in the next import, it will override Volleyball and Basketball.

2. If you use this text field in segmentation you see the values there like you stored it in the field (e.g. Volleyball, Basketball, Fishing). In your example you would have to use the search function in segmentation in the preview area to filter for contacts with interests "Fishing".

3. Yes you can always select multiple values of an attribute (like you did for job function) for creating a new segment.

Hope this answers the question. Otherwise let me know.

BR Tobias

[Former Member]

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for your reply! Hopefully SAP will work on this. This is essential for all marketers.

So you mean this one (see screen shot 3), just a text field where we make use of comma-separated values? Can we always enrich this field with new values if we do an import? Or should we always have the source file exactly the same as we want in SAP Marketing Cloud?

For example:

SAP Marketing Cloud
Interests = Volleybal, Basketbal

>
New data import
Interests = Fishing

>
SAP Marketing Cloud
Interests =Volleybal, Basketbal, Fishing

Screen shot 1

And can we then make easily segments with these values? For example this segment where I want to select all CEOs, Managers and Marketers in attribute 'job function'. See screen shot 2 what I tried to do. Am I right to do it this way?

And I saw that you can select multiple values for a segment within an attribute (see screen shot 3), but storing multiple values is unfortunately not possible. Am I right?

Screen shot 2

Screen shot 3