Custom Fields

What are custom fields? 

Prospects come with a standard group of fields to be populated.  However, if there is a field not native to Outreach you’re looking for and fits your use case, a custom field might be necessary.

Custom fields are located under settings > prospect >> General. 

Here, you’re able to add a custom field or modify an existing one.  Once a custom field has been entered and saved, that field will be available in the prospects settings and wherever custom fields are applicable.

Naming your custom fields is helpful to keep everything linear across the whole org and ensure people are importing the correct information into the correct custom fields. This also allows them to show up as a named field on the prospect level an within the Salesforce plugin field mappings on the lead and the contact objects. 

We have 30 custom fields on the prospect level in Outreach, and 15 on the account level. Outreach Custom fields are limited to 255 characters. 

Custom Fields Use Cases

Templates

Templates allow you to include the custom field information as an auto populating variable.

When creating a template, click on the variable icon at the bottom of the compose window.  Select from the list of variables to choose from.  Variables labeled {{CustomX}}, with X being numbers 1-30, are your custom variables set up in settings.  The double brackets on the left show you which number variable it is, while on the right displays the content for that variable.  

In the example below, the custom variable #1 is “shoe size.”  Notice how the email is formatted as a template, and the dynamic preview to the right.

Triggers

Custom fields can be used to create triggers, automated actions taken by Outreach based on specified conditions.

Under settings > triggers > +add > edit trigger, you’re able to add one of your custom fields to the prospect conditions.  

Plugins

Custom fields are extremely useful if your Salesforce instance has a lot of information that is necessary for prospect engagement. You can map the custom fields to those fields in your SFDC and bring that information into Outreach. Once in Outreach you can sort, filter, and segment prospects using that information so that prospects get the most targeting messaging for their persona. Or, you can use those custom fields in templates or sequences. Say you've generated a custom URL or code for use across a specific group of prospects. You can designate a custom field for that and direct them to a page specifically for them using the custom field in as a variable. i.e. Outreach.com/{{custom15}}.