Help: Importing Contacts User Guide

Transcription

1 Help: Importing Contacts User Guide

2 Contents 1. PURPOSE OF THIS GUIDE: OVERVIEW OF THE IMPORT PROCESS: PREPARING YOUR IMPORT CONTACTS FILE STARTING THE IMPORT CONTACTS WIZARD THE TYPE OF IMPORT IMPORT SETTINGS COLUMN MAPPINGS FURTHER HELP AND SUPPORT Purpose of this guide: This guide will help you with importing contacts into your e-shot account. If after following this guide, you experience any challenges, or require further assistance, (for example to increase your contacts limit), please don t hesitate to contact us: on (between 9am and 6pm) us at support@forfront.com, or use our Live Chat: 2. Overview of the Import Process: When importing contacts into e-shot, we have a wizard that guides you step by step, to ensure contacts are imported properly into your account. The steps you need to go through when importing your contacts are as follows: 1) Prepare your import file 2) Start the Import Contacts Wizard 3) Choose what type of data you are importing 4) Choose the import settings and select your import file 5) Map the imported data column headings to the Contact Fields in the system 6) Complete the import. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 2 of 10

3 3. Preparing your Import Contacts File When importing contacts into e-shot, you need to make sure that your file is saved in one of the following three formats: csv xls or xlsx No other file formats are supported. All contacts added to e-shot require a unique address and the field is mandatory. You also need to make sure that if you are importing mobile numbers, that the mobile numbers are formatted correctly, as text, so they maintain the leading zero. Both standard and custom contact fields can be added and edited as desired, either entered manually or imported directly into e-shot. We also have a Standard field for Mobile. You don t have to include mobile numbers in your import, but we recommend that you add a Mobile column to your spreadsheet, so it will be available as a field header, so that you can map a column to that title. Here s some guidance to help make sure your import document is prepared correctly: 1) Make sure that the first line (row) contains fields with your column headings. a. Preferably in the following order: , Mobile, Salutation, Firstname, Lastname, Company, Telephone, URN If your fields are in a different order, you may need to manually adjust these in a later step, during the import process. 2) Make sure your data contains no special characters: ; : ( ) [ ] #! % & " $ * + / =? > < 3) Data can symbols, full stops and hyphens contained in addresses, and the plus sign is acceptable for use within Mobile numbers. 4) Make sure your data has not got any formatted styles (use basic formatting only). a. This can be achieved by copying and pasting all the data into a new Excel spreadsheet using the Edit» "Paste special - values only" function i. (more details can be found here: gb/article/paste-values-not-formulas-12687b4d-c79f-4137-b0cc- 947c229c55b9); 5) Make sure your import file is under 10MB. If it is 10MB or more, please either split your contacts into smaller lists and retry or call us on for support; 6) Please make sure your data contains correctly formatted mobile numbers, especially if you import from an Excel spreadsheet (and not CSV). You can leave this field blank if you don t have a number for this contact. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 3 of 10

4 a. To prevent Excel from deleting the leading zero in phone numbers, ensure the Mobile column is formatted as General or Text. This will preserve the data you put in it. b. To prevent losing the leading zeros in numbers you can do any one of the following: 1. include an apostrophe before the zero e.g include an apostrophe before the +XX international code e.g have a space between the numbers e.g Please ensure an import will not cause your contacts quota to be exceeded. If it is exceeded, your import will fail once the limit has been reached. Ring us on to increase your contacts limit. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 4 of 10

5 4. Starting the Import Contacts Wizard Once your import file is ready, you can begin the import process and access the wizard from any of the places described here: To access the Contacts Import wizard, you should see an Import Contacts button on your Home dashboard (upon logging in). If you are already in the contacts, section then you can see the Import Contacts wizard on the side bar. You can also access the Import Contacts wizard, from the Contacts Manager submenu when in any other section of e-shot. (If you don t see any of these options above, then you may not have been given permission to import contacts into your account. If this is the case, please contact your administrator, or our support team, to get this functionality added for you). Before you start the wizard, though, we suggest making sure that you have your contacts prepared in the correct file format, to make the import process is as quick and simple as possible. So please make sure to review the previous section (3. Preparing your Import Contacts File) e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 5 of 10

6 5. The Type of Import Once you start the Import Contacts wizard, you ll first have to tell the system which type of contacts you re importing. a) Are you importing brand new contacts? b) Are you replacing an existing list of contacts? c) or are you importing a suppression list A) If they are brand new contacts, that have never been entered, and will be added to an existing or new list, then select: Import a new list B) If you wish to re-set all the data in a group (Purge on import) with your upload, replacing all the contacts in a list that already exists in e- shot, then select: Repopulate a group with an import (Note, if you do this, then any contacts currently in the group, which are not in your imported data, will be deleted). C) If the list you re uploading contains people who have asked you to refrain from contacting them, or who have asked to be removed from your mailing lists, then choose to upload a Suppression list. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 6 of 10

7 6. Import Settings After you ve chosen the Type of Import you ll be performing, you next need to select all the settings related to your import. These include: 1) Source use sources to keep track of where your data has come from. a. Every contact that is added to the system will be tagged with a Source of your choice. b. Sources allow you to monitor the quality of the data you have. Over time, you ll be able to review in reporting the engagement levels of one data source vs another. c. You can only select one source, for a given import. d. This is a permanent tag for the lifetime of the contact. e. Sources are a way to keep your data organised f. Sources enable you to analyse bounces and unsubscribes for a given Source of data, regardless of which groups they reside within. For example, contacts collected at events, or via your website would have respective Sources tagged to them. 2) Groups use groups to segment your data. a. When importing, you can create a new group, or select one or more existing groups. Use groups to keep your contacts filed/organized in your account, so that when you come to sending you can quickly identify all the contacts in a particular list with a common characteristic, or interest. 3) Remove Generic addresses remove impersonal s. a. If your list contains any generic addresses, rather than actual s of named individuals, then it could have an adverse impact on the performance of your campaign. Common s of info@ sales@ or marketing@ are less likely to be as closely monitored, and more likely to be classed as spam, which is why we encourage you to remove such s from your list, at the point of importing. b. s that go to individuals have a much higher engagement and success rate than s going to generic mailboxes e.g. info@ or sales@ so we would advise removing all generic addresses from your import, unless you specifically know that a particular generic mailbox is used by an individual/contact. 4) Duplicates how do you want duplicate data to be handled? a. If you already have an in the system, which is in your import list, then do you want it to be updated, with the details you are importing? Or do you want to leave it with the details in the system? 5) Import Summary Report once the upload is completed, which address do you want notified with a summary of the import? a. You have the option to request an import summary to be sent once the import is performed e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 7 of 10

8 b. This report gives you details of any import failures and details of the total number of s imported. 6) Upload File this step includes a disclaimer, which you need to agree to, that confirms your data isn t the product of spam, or scraping data from websites. a. Once you have read and agreed to the terms and conditions, then you are ready to choose your import file. b. Once you have uploaded your file, you can then select the green Continue button at the bottom right hand edge of the page to move to the next step. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 8 of 10

9 7. Column Mappings Now that the system knows everything about your import, the only step left is to Map the column headings in your file, with the Contact Fields in the system (this includes Custom Fields that you might have created, as well as the standard Contact Fields that every e-shot has by default). Where possible, the system will do it s best to match the column headings in your file, with the Contact Field names in the system. If for any reason, you need to change any of the mappings that have been selected, you can go to the mapping with the wrong title from Your File, and select Choose Column. That then makes the previously chosen Column heading available to be assigned to a different Contact Field. Any field that has Choose Column listed beside it, will not import any data, and will remain blank, unless it was previously already populated, in which case the previous data will remain in that field instead. Please ensure that on the Column Mappings page, that the fields are matched up with the columns that have the same corresponding data type. After being satisfied with all the Column Mappings, then you can safely go ahead and hit the green Import button in the bottom right hand side of the screen, which will start the import process for you. e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 9 of 10

10 8. Further help and support After following the instructions and guidance in this guide, If you have any outstanding questions, encounter any problems, want to increase the size of your container, or would like more help and/or support with regards to importing contacts, or how to use the imported contacts in your campaigns, please get in touch. You can: 1) speak to your account manager 2) contact support on , (between 9am and 6pm) 3) us at or 4) use our Live Chat: We also offer a comprehensive data cleansing service, that checks your entire list, and helps ensure that you only have valid s in your mailing list. For more information on our data cleansing service speak to your account manager, or us at support@forfront.com e-shot Help Importing Contacts - User Guide v1.0 Page 10 of 10