How do I import contacts into an address book?

How do I import contacts into an address book?

Upload contacts into a new or existing list using our contact importer.

Before you start

Things you need to know:
  1. You can only import  Excel, CSV, TXT  and  ZIP  file formats.
  2. Contacts can also be uploaded to your contact lists.
Learn how in  Create a contact list  for your email campaigns.

Import contacts into your account

  1. Go to  Audience  >  Contacts .
  2. Expand the  NEW CONTACT  drop-down menu at the top of the page and select  Import contacts .
  3. On the  Upload contacts page :
    1. (Required) For File, select  CHOOSE FILE  and choose the file you want to upload.  The file must be CSV, TXT, XLSX or ZIP format.
    2. (Optional) For Email address to notify, enter the email address you want us to send the upload-complete report to.
    3. (Required) For Encoding type, expand the  drop-down menu  and choose the  encoding type of your file .  UTF-8 supports most languages.


  4. Select  UPLOAD .
  5. 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 under How to map your contact data.


  6. 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 drop-down menu of each field and select the appropriate contact data field for each column, or create a new contact data field by selecting  Add new data field .

If your file contains consent data, then you need to map any columns to the appropriate consent fields in the dropdown - consentdatetime, consentip, consenttext, consenturl and consentuseragent. You don't need to include all five consent fields to be able to map this type of data successfully.

Mapping an opt-in type

To import contacts with an opt-in type, map the following values to the opt-in type contact data field:
  1. Single
  2. Double
If you don't map one of these values to this contact data field, the value is set to Unknown by default.

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.

Automatic mapping

If your import file uses our standard contact data field labels as column names then these are automatically mapped for you.

Using column names that differ to our 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 select  Include on first row .

This lets the importer know it should recognize 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.

Overwriting data by importing contacts into an existing list

  1. If you're importing into an existing list, and overwriting contact data, select  CHANGE SETTINGS  to choose a data merge option.

  2. You can either choose to:
    1. update all of the existing contact data fields with the imported data.
    2. keep existing data in contact data fields from being updated with any imported blank values.
    3. merge your imported data so that you keep any existing values in contact data fields. 
  3. When ready, select  FINISH  and the file is imported into the selected list.
Successful imports are confirmed by a clearance message from our powerful and intelligent data analysis tool, 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.

View your import report

To see a breakdown report of your contact imports, expand the  User menu  and go to  Settings > Contacts > Import history .

  1. 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.
  2. To open a  Contacts import report , select the  Report icon .


  The Contacts import report displays useful data about the contacts you have imported, including:
  1. Total uploaded contacts
  2. New and updated contacts
  3. Contacts not imported 



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