Create a Custom Profile Center with AMPscript

This page contains information about creating a custom Profile Center for Email Studio's Web Collect that takes information entered on a web page and uses it to update information in your account. This Profile Center also triggers a send using information taken from Marketing Cloud Engagement.

Email Studio's Web Collect allows your customers to subscribe, provide attribute information, or unsubscribe using forms on your website.

If you allow new subscribers to sign up via your website, you must pass data for all required profile and preference attributes, including those that are defined as hidden, for each new subscriber.

The Email Studio Profile Center displays when a subscriber clicks the Modify Profile link in an email that you sent while using Email Studio.

To access your Profile Center, navigate to the Subscribers | Profile Management section of Email Studio and choose Preview Profile Center. The Profile Center displays all attributes that are not defined as hidden in your account.

See Email Studio Web Collect.

The custom profile center includes a workflow specifically designed and developed to take information submitted by a new or existing subscriber and update records accordingly. Because it is a custom solution, you can create it to perform specific actions depending on your needs and your workflow.

Your custom profile center allows you to manage information in your account and use that information to conduct triggered sends as confirmation of more or changed information in a particular profile. The automation allows the user to keep their information up to date without involving more effort from your team. This profile center also allows you to review tracking information inside Marketing Cloud Engagement for analysis and appropriate action.

Northern Trail Outfitters uses Marketing Cloud Engagement to manage information about their subscribers and conduct triggered sends regarding information changes to those subscribers. To help customers manage their information, Northern Trail Outfitters builds a custom profile center that takes information from a web form and either creates a new subscriber record or updates an existing record. That change triggers an email that includes the appropriate dynamic form information for that record and sends it to the new or existing subscriber.

To set up the triggered sends:

  1. Download the files via the link on this page, or copy and paste the examples below.
  2. Edit the AMPscript to customize the variables for your server, configuration, and subscribers.
  3. Put these edited pages in the correct folder of your local web server (where your Web Collect page is running) that can access the server and also access the SOAP API endpoint. Review the next sections for more details. For more help with your setup, contact Salesforce Customer Support.

The custom profile center includes several components.

  • A web form used to interact with new and existing subscribers.
  • The code necessary to make API calls.
  • An administrative page used to determine the information that shows in the profile center.
  • The email message used to communicate profile changes to the subscriber.
  • The triggered send definition used to send the email message.

Use this code example as a template for building your own web form.

This section retrieves information from data extensions for display.

This section retrieves the list to be modified as part of the activity in the profile center.

Use this code example as a model as you build your own administrative page.