Before you start
Things you need to know:
You can only import Excel, CSV, TXT, or ZIP file formats. Max file size is 50MB.
Mobile numbers must use the international phone number format starting with (+), for example: +44 7000 000000.
Before importing your contacts, ensure your data is well-structured and clean.
For example, each contact's details should be in its own row, and unnecessary placeholder values should be removed. This helps to reduce errors and make the import process smoother.
Required permissions
To use this feature, you must be an account owner or have the following user permissions:
Contacts
Can create contacts
Learn more about user permissions.
Import contacts into your account
Before you start
If you're uploading contacts with mobile numbers, you must set your mobile subscription settings.
Go to Audience > Contacts.
Expand the NEW CONTACT drop-down menu and select Import contacts.
On the Upload contacts page:
For File, select CHOOSE FILE and choose the file you want to upload.
Required
For Email address to notify, enter the email address you want to send the upload complete report to.
Optional
For Encoding type, expand the drop-down menu and choose the encoding type of your file. UTF-8 supports most languages.
Required
Select UPLOAD.
Under Map your contact data fields, expand the drop-down menus to map your file column to a data field in your account.
Learn more in the section How to map your contact data.Select FINISH.
We now upload your file and import the contacts. This might take a few minutes.
How to map your contact data
On the data mapping page
Expand the Map to contact data field drop-down menu for each column of your file.
Select the contact data field to map the column to.
To create a new contact data field to map to, select Add new data field.
In the Create a new data field side panel, enter the required details:
Name
Data type
Default value
Access
Folder
Learn more in the section Create a custom contact data field.
Select CREATE.
To not import the data from a column, select Skip column.
Once you have mapped all of the columns from your import file, select FINISH.
Map consent data
If your file contains consent data, you need to map any columns to the appropriate consent fields in the drop-down menu : consentdatetime, consentip, consenttext, consenturl, and consentuseragent.
You don't need to include all five consent fields map this data successfully.
Map an opt-in type
To import contacts with an opt-in type, map the following values to the optintype contact data field:
Single
Double
If you don't map one of these values to this contact data field, the value is set to Unknown.
If you don't have verified double opt-in turned on for all signups under Regulatory settings in your account settings and you map Verified double as a value to this contact data field, the value is changed to Unknown.
Map custom IDs
If you have set up custom IDs, then you can map these during a file import in the same way as you map your contact data fields.
To avoid unique identifier conflicts, verify that no duplicate values exist for email addresses or phone numbers in your data file. Conflicts can result in rejected data during the import process.
You should know:
Custom ID values must be unique per contact.
You can't overwrite an existing custom ID value through a file import.
Learn more about custom IDs.
Automatic mapping
If your import file uses our standard contact data field labels as column names, then these are automatically mapped for you.
Column names that differ from standard contact data field labels
If you've included column names that differ from our standard contact data field labels in any way, you need to select CHANGE SETTINGS and then for Column names select Include on first row.
This lets the importer know it should recognise the top row of your import as column names rather than a standard data row, and prevents the importer from rejecting the row for being an invalid email address.
Overwrite data by importing contacts into an existing list
If you're importing into an existing list, and overwriting contact data, select CHANGE SETTINGS to choose a data merge option.
Expand the Data field options drop-down menu and choose from:
Update all data fields
Update all of the existing contact data fields with the imported data.
Don't update data fields with blank values
Don't replace existing data in contact data fields blank values from the import file.
Don't update data fields that already have a value
Merge your imported data so that you keep any existing values in contact data fields.
When ready, select FINISH and the file is imported into the selected list.
All imported files are checked by our Data Watchdog, and if your import is successful, you see a confirmation message.
Learn more about the Data Watchdog.
If any records failed to import successfully, your import report displays how many, and allows you to download a file of these contacts to review the data.
View your import report
Expand the User menu and go to Settings > Contacts > Import history.
Select DATE RANGE in the top right and choose the time period you want to see your contact imports from. Import history is stored for 30 days.
To open a Contacts import report, select the Report icon.
The Contacts import report displays useful data about the contacts you have imported, including:
Total uploaded contacts
New and updated contacts
Contacts not imported