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Custom fields are one of the most powerful features in SwiftFox, allowing you to report on, track and manage your contacts, exactly how you need. Let's explore how automations can make these custom fields work even harder for you.

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In this tutorial, we'll look at two game changing ways. Automations can help you manage custom fields. Using a custom field change to trigger an automation. Updating custom fields automatically based on other actions. Let's dive into our first example.

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I want to create an automation to send automatic confirmation emails when my members renew date changes.

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First, let's create a new automation called Membership renewal confirmation. Select Trigger Automation and choose one or more custom fields changed.

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Now we'll tell Swift Fox which custom field to watch. We want this to run when the membership renewal date changes.

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So select the person record type and then Membership Renewal Date. You can choose to run this for any change or set specific values to look out for. Select add trigger. Next, we set up what we want to happen after the change. Select Add Action and choose an email is sent. Here we will target the email to affected contacts email addresses and have the email come from the membership team.

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You can use an existing email template here, but it is important to make sure to check the merge fields are pulling the correct information, as they can be different from regular emails.

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To do this will open the email builder and update the merge fields for members name, and then new renewal date. Save and close. Add the action and hit publish.

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Now your members will automatically receive confirmation emails about their renewal dates.

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I know what you're thinking. Wow. That's incredible. But just wait. There's more. Let's look at how automations can update custom fields for you

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Here I have an existing automation that sends an email to a contact after they complete our contact form.

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This is really cool, but you might want to automatically update their mailing list custom field so they're added to your weekly newsletter.

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Here's how we'll add an additional action by selecting Add an action. By the way, you can add as many actions as you like.

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Select a custom field is updated and target it to contacts created or updated by the form. Choose your mailing list custom field. Set it to yes and add the action.

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Simple as that. Now everyone who completes your form will be automatically added to your mailing list, saving you time to focus on the more important things like taking longer coffee breaks. These examples just scratch the surface. The possibilities for combining custom fields and automations are endless.

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Ready to make your custom field work even harder for you? Then check out our other tutorials to discover more SwiftFox features that will streamline your workflow.