Features by Screen: Admin: Importing Contacts 

Import Your Contacts

In order to start marketing to your current prospects and customers (for those of you who already have some), you'll need to get them "in" to our system. We’ve worked hard to make this step as simple as possible. Still, there are so many different systems you may currently be using to manage your contact lists – each with its own process for exporting data – that our ability to offer step-by-step instructions is limited. We DID, however, create step-by-step screen cast tutorial videos that will walk you through exporting contacts from iContact and Constant Contact.

If you’re technically savvy, you’ll find this step a snap. Otherwise, it may be easiest to let us give you a hand with this one. If you have trouble, email us at support@OfficeAutopilot.com or support@SendPepper.com and we can help. But before you do, try to follow along with the instructions in this section and watch the videos on exporting and importing your contacts. It’s easier than you might think.

This will be a two step process. First you’re going to need to get a copy of your contacts OUT of your current program. Then, you’ll get those contacts IN to your OfficeAutopilot or SendPepper account.

Export Your Contacts

You’re looking for a CSV file. Most contact management programs have an Export feature that will allow you to turn your contact list into a file that you can save on your computer. Typically, you’ll find the Export feature under the File, Settings, Contacts, or Preferences menu of your software. Follow the instructions there, and create a CSV file from your contact list.

Clean Up Your File in Excel

This step is sometimes important, sometimes not, depending on how organized your contacts are, and from how many different sources you exported them. If you end up having problems with importing your contacts, cleaning up your file will very likely be the solution. What we mean by ‘clean up’ is to remove funky characters, empty columns, and separate data into their own respective fields. We created a video that shows how this is done. If presented with the choice, you'll want to save your file as the .CSV (MS-DOS) or .CSV (Windows) file type.

Import Your Contacts

This is the easy part. Watch a video about it here or read through the steps:

1. Login to your OfficeAutopilot account.

2. Click Admin link in the upper right-hand corner.

3. Click Import Contacts under “User Tools” section.

4. Be certain your file is a .csv and not a .xls file.

5. Check the ‘My file has a header row’ box if the first line of your file has field names (like First Name, Last Name, Email Address, etc.) instead of data (like John, Doe, johndoe@gmail.com, etc.). If you’re not sure, don’t check the box.

6. Click the Upload File, and find the CSV that you created in step one. Click Open or OK and your file will upload to our servers.

7. Click Import next to the file you just uploaded.

8. Choose your Merge preferences. This will decide what happens when the system finds an email address that’s already in your database:

1. Choose ‘Create new entry’ if you want to make a NEW record for each incoming contact. Warning: this setting may create duplicate records which can lead to people getting duplicates of the same email and/or postcard, which looks pretty sloppy. So be sure you have a good reason for choosing ‘Create new entry.’

2. Choose 'Merge and Overwrite' to merge databases by email address and use the new, imported data to overwrite your existing database wherever it finds conflicts. That is, if OfficeAutopilot finds an email match, but the phone numbers for that records DON’T match, it will use the new, imported phone number and OVERWRITE the one that exists in your database.

3. Choose 'Merge and Underwrite' to do the opposite. Where data conflicts, OfficeAutopilot will keep the data in your database and discard what’s in the file you’re importing.

9. Then, match the fields from your imported file to the fields in your OfficeAutopilot.com database. So, what you’ll see is the list of available fields in OfficeAutopilot, with a dropdown box next to each. In those drop down boxes will be the data from the first row of the file you’re importing. So, to match, just go to the email field, and choose ‘email’ from the drop down box. Then do the same for address, first name, last name, and so on till you’ve matched all the fields you want to import.

10. If you want to tag all contacts that are being imported with the same tag, select the tags now. If you want to tag them with a tag that you’ve not yet created, you can click the “Manage Tags” link, which will take you to the screen where you can create brand new tags. Note that you will have to go through the field matching (mapping) process over again if you leave this screen. If each contact in the incoming list has different tags, you need to have a column in your spreadsheet with those tags, and match them with “Contact Tags” as you would the other fields. If there are multiple tags for each contact, you need to have them separated by “*/*” in the cell. For example: “Client*/*Heavy Referrer*/*Met at SF Tradeshow”. You can watch the video on this where we'll walk you through the process here.

11. If you want to add them all to a sequence, do that now. Of course, it’s very likely that at the point when you’re first importing your database, you won’t yet have any sequences set up, nor, perhaps even be completely clear on what a sequence is yet. No problem! That will come soon enough…

12. Choose default values. For example, if you want to add a note to all these imported contacts, choose ‘Enter Default Value’ in the 'Notes' field and write your note. Same for all other fields, if you want a default value.

13. Click Import when you’re finished. Note that any fields left unassigned in the field list above will NOT be imported.

That’s it!

FAQs

Some questions we've heard...

Should I choose "Merge and Overwrite", "Merge and Underwrite", or "Create new entry"?

I want to import a list of contacts, but some of them have already opted out. How can I handle the import so these people don't start getting emailed with info they've already requested to stop receiving.

"If I upload a new contact already exists in the system, will the system reject it?"

"I imported contacts and I want to delete them, how can I do this without selecting each individually?"

I did an import and I just have a bunch of blank contacts. What gives?

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