The Web Extend data collection scripts update a set of custom fields in your Emarsys account with data related to the activity of your contacts on your website. These fields are updated every few hours.

Although not as extensive in scope as the metrics uploaded to Smart Insight, this data can be used by you to launch targeted product campaigns, such as cart abandonment or stock clearance. We have provided some examples of Automation Center programs using these fields.

The system field Opt-in (ID = 31) stores the opt-in for email campaigns. The value should only be set to TRUE via a double opt-in process.

Any form of unsubscription by the recipient of an email will set this to FALSE.  In cases where email subscription is unknown, the value NULL should be used. This field should not contain an empty string "" when using the API.

For normal marketing emails, only contacts with the value TRUE will receive the email, unless the option Ignore opt-in has been enabled for your account by Emarsys Support.

Some transactional email types will ignore this field, see: Ignoring opt-in for certain transactional emails.

You cannot set the value of this field from FALSE to TRUE via an import or forms, the only method that is allowed is via the API.

The system field Interests (ID = 0) is a special multi-choice field which is automatically added to your Emarsys forms. You can use this to collect a standard set of preference information on your new registrations, for example. To create and edit the available options, go to Management > Form Settings > Opt-in invitation and interests.

You can also update the Interests of existing contacts either by exporting them and adding the values externally, or by editing the contacts individually.

The language selected for these options is the Form default language that is selected in your Profile page. If you use forms in multiple languages, you can provide translations of these options. Simply select the target Language, then the Interest field and click Translate.

When you have done this, these translations will appear when you change the language of the form.

The system field Newsletter (ID = 36) is a special multi-choice field which lists as its values all the Newsletter forms that you have created. When a contact subscribes to a newsletter through such a form, that value is automatically checked for them. If they unsubscribe, the same value is unchecked.

In this way you can keep your subscriptions to individual newsletters independent, both of each other and of the general opt-in.

When you create a newsletter email campaign, you can select Generated through a multi opt-in form as the Recipient source, and then select the opt-in form that collects the subscriptions.

The Newsletter field is not available for segmentation. If you want to create a segment based on one of the newsletter opt-in values, you must create an email campaign for that newsletter form, generate the launch list and save that as a contact list.

You can then segment based on that contact list.

This field prevents Web Extend from including the contact ID when tracking browse and purchase events on your web shop. It should be used to offer customers the chance to opt-out of this tracking, in accordance with GDPR (for more information, see: GDPR and Web Extend - all you need to know).

Web Extend will still track behavior and send that data to the Predict servers, but there will be no hashed email address or any form of contact ID associated with it. This data will be used to build the statistical models that underpin the Predict product recommendations.

Campaigns often use birthdays, but sometimes the date of birth in the system is not reliable or empty. In campaigns, the date of birth is treated in the following way:

• Birthdays that are over 120 in the past do not count, the system ignores them.
• Empty birthday fields are also not valid birthdays.

Let's assume that a contact provided the month and the day right, but - as an attempt to disguise their age - entered a year in the 19th century. This contact will not be able to benefit from birthday campaigns.