In order to send out a campaign, you will want to add your recipients as contacts within the platform. This is all done from Manage Contacts, which is under Contacts in the dashboard menu, seen below. From here, contacts can be added manually, or uploaded as a list all at once (via csv or excel file upload) or exported. You may also modify or delete your contacts, as well as adding or removing them to a list.
Uploading Individual Contacts
First, we'll demonstrate adding a single contact. To do this, click . The following popup will appear, allowing you to enter the details for your individual contact.
relates to custom contact data, which you can read about here. For now, we only want a name and ‘mobile number’ (or email if you prefer).
Click when you are ready, and you should see your contact appear in the list.
If you would like to modify your contact, you can edit or delete their details by clicking the .
That's it, you are now able to distribute a campaign to this contact. But what if your campaign is intended for many more recipients? You can't add all of your contacts this way, it would be too time consuming.
Thankfully, there is another way...
Uploading Contacts via Excel or CSV
This is the most efficient way of uploading your contacts. Before you can upload your contact database, there are some rules your file needs to adhere. See Preparing your contact database for details. To upload a CSV or Excel file, click .
Click and upload your file via file browser, or drag the file into the dashed line seen above. If it is loaded correctly, you will see a preview of your data.
You may notice we have tried to 'guess' what each column represents. This is done by reading any column headers and looking for certain patterns. Check that these definitions are accurate, and add any that are missing via the drop down boxes. If you would like to use custom data, this needs to be set up before you upload your contact list.
Skip the first line of data – If your table has a header row, you must select the toggle; else you will be adding a contact with the name 'First Name' and a mobile of ‘PhoneNumber'.
Update existing Contacts – This will not be required for your first contact upload, but for detail on how to do this, see Updating existing contacts
Insert into List – You can create a new list here and add these contacts to it, or place them into lists later on. See more on lists here.
Country prefix - This is important. Mobile numbers need to have the appropriate country code prefix, to ensure messages are sent to the intended numbers. The best way to do this is with a separate upload for each region, and setting the appropriate country code with each upload. This gives you flexibility in the way your contact base is segmented, as each upload can be listed by region. If you do not want to set a 'default' country prefix for the entire upload, you can manually add the correct country prefix within the mobile field itself for each user. We do not recommend this, as it can be time consuming and error prone. A country prefix does not matter for email distribution, but if you plan to send SMS at all, you want to make sure this is set correctly.
When the above details are correct, click
And we're done! Your contacts should appear within the manage contacts table. If you require any assistance with this process, please contact [email protected]
Exporting Contacts as Excel or CSV
To export the contact lists, click
Provide your email address and click . You will receive an email with a download link using which you can download the contacts as Excel or CSV. If you require any assistance with this process, please contact [email protected]
