In this article, we will go through what a subscriber field is and how to create subscriber fields in Rule.

We will cover:

1. What is a subscriber field?
2. What is a subscriber group?
3. How do I add subscriber fields to a group?

What is a subscriber field?

A subscriber field can be directly compared to the content of a column in Excel. If we think of the image below as your file, then Email, Phone Number, First Name, Last Name, and Language are subscriber fields. 

One can see subscriber fields as fields in Rule that symbolize the customer data that you upload to Rule.

What is a subscriber group?

To effectively and easily organize your customer data, you can create different types of groups with different subscriber fields and customer information. For example, you can create a group called "Subscribers" with subscriber fields such as first name and last name of your subscribers. You can also create a group for "Orders" where all data related to customer orders is displayed with different subscriber fields than for "Subscribers". 

1. Click on "Subscribers"
2. Then on "Subscriber Fields"
3. Here you can see your "Groups"
4. In each group, you can see in this field how many subscriber fields are in the group
5. Here you can choose whether a specific group and its data should be updated historically or non-historically
6. When the group is created

What does it mean to save a subscriber group historically?
When you activate historical data, a copy is saved every time a subscriber field is updated. For example, in the "Order" group, you want to save each specific order that a customer makes. 

How do I add a group and add subscriber fields?

1. Name your group
2. Check if you want the group to be saved historically or not
3. Click on "+ New Field"
4. Name your new subscriber field 
5. Choose whether it is text, multiple choice, date & time or date. We chose date and time because we want to see which day and time the new subscriber signed up. In the fields above, you can see that we chose text, because first name, last name and city will provide information in plain text. Multiple choice means that you can have multiple values in the same field, which will be separated by a comma "," in Rule.
6. This will be the name of the field that developers can use for API integrations. It is named group name.field name.