Importing Contacts

We import lots of data for clients, and this could be from moving CRM systems, updating contact lists or new signups. It would be easy to click the upload button in the chosen system, but without adequately analysing this data, you could run into all sorts of issues. 

Many people don’t realise that too many bounced emails or spam complaints and the software being used could halt your account, and then you’ll need to go through a process of removing the limits. We’ve seen it before where businesses have to prove where the data has come from and if they opted-in to receive marketing emails. If they can’t prove this, the email tool can ask for all those contacts to be removed before they can resume service. 

How do you start the process of checking the quality of your contact list? 

First things first, get all the contacts into a spreadsheet. You can do a manual check if you wish, but we first use a tool called ZeroBounce. This is a fast and accurate email validation tool. This service works out to around 4p for every email checked, and the outcome is a list that is 98% correct. Once you’ve run the program, you’ll receive several .CSV files containing the results from valid, spam, invalid and so on. At this point, you only really want to use the valid list and have this as your base to upload to your CRM. 

Importing Contacts

Now the time has come to import these clean contacts. Before you click import, ensure you have all the information you want in the file. Has everyone got an email address? Have you all the custom fields you require? 

When you come to importing, everyone has their own method of doing this; our way of doing this is to import them into a new list, even if the name of this list is the date of upload. 

The various systems may sometimes need specific columns; for example, Sharpspring needs a column that reads ‘Is Unsubscribed’ with a value of either 0 or 1, depending on their subscribe preference. 

You’ll then go through a series of screens to match the form headers with what the software calls them, things like Last Name being matched with Surname or Zip Code and Post Code. Any reputable software should also ask you to confirm that this list hasn’t been purchased and that subscribed and unsubscribed have been labelled correctly. 

Filtering and Segmenting

Once you’ve imported the contacts, you’ll want to filter and segment them. This can be done in many ways. Do these contacts need to go onto an event list, or are they new subscribers to your newsletter? If you’ve used tags or custom fields, you may need to add them to one of your existing lists to group all of the ones with common interests. 

How you segment them is ultimately down to you, but doing this allows you to ensure people are only receiving relevant content and should decrease unsubscribing. 

If you need help setting up your CRM system, please drop us a message, and we’ll be happy to help.