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Uploading or importing contacts into a list
Uploading or importing contacts into a list

How to create or import a list of email and SMS subscribers from a CSV or Excel file

Warren Foushee avatar
Written by Warren Foushee
Updated over a week ago

Creating and importing lists of email and SMS subscribers from a CSV or Excel file is handled in the Email & SMS interface.

To import contacts into a list, click Email & SMS on the left menu panel, then click the Lists tab at the top of the page. 

On the Lists tab, you can Create a New List (1) or you can explore and update your existing Lists and topics (2).

To create a new list, click the green +Create New List button in the top right corner. 

In the Create new contact list window, choose your department, type a name for your new list, and then click Create List.

Now you are ready to add contacts to your list.

To find the list you've just created, use the Filter box (1). In this case, we are looking for “Jay’s Friends”. You don't need to type the full list name. After locating the list, click the blue Actions menu (2) to the right of the list.

Scroll down the Actions menu and select Upload Contacts.

The Import Contacts window will allow you to Manually Add a Subscriber at the top, Or upload a list of contacts below. 

*To add more fields, you can request additional custom fields. Please note this is a feature that requires a Complete plan for the CRM.

Formatting your file for upload

This file may have been created manually on your computer, or exported from an external application. 

Note: Your contacts must be stored as an .xlsx or .csv file (CSV UTF-8 format). The application recognizes the following column names: Email, Phone, First Name, Last Name, Name, Address, City, Zip, State. It is best to remove non-standard column names as they will be ignored.

In the example below, you can see there are some columns in this file exported from MailChimp that you wouldn't want to upload - e.g., "MEMBER_RATING". The system will not recognize these fields (see the list above) and it is recommended you remove these columns. Edit and save the updated file.

Uploading your file

Ready to upload? After saving your file, click Select a file to upload. Locate your file on your computer and click Upload List in the Import Contacts window.

The list may take a few minutes to upload - especially for lists with over 500 members. You can see confirmation that the list has been uploaded at the top left of the screen:

Viewing uploaded contacts

To see the contents of your new list, in the Lists interface, click the list name. This will open a dialog with your list's contacts:

Now you can use this list to contact subscribers and create new campaigns. 


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