Best Practices for Importing Contacts - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

Best Practices for Importing Contacts in Zoho Campaigns

If you've been managing your contacts in a spreadsheet or in a different software and want them to be present in Zoho Campaigns, you can do an import. But before you do the import, here are some best practices and accepted etiquette that you need to follow.

Before the Import

  • Initial analysis of what data you want to import into Zoho Campaigns must be done. This includes the fields you would like to be present in the app, such as Address, social handles, and many more.
  • In your file, the field names should be labeled properly for easy identification. This will help during the field mapping procedure when importing contacts.
  • If you're looking to import the contacts with bare minimum of data, having the First Name, Last Name, Contact Email, and Phone fields would suffice.
  • For segmentation purposes, it would be useful to have additional data for your contacts such as Country, City, Job Title, etc.
  • The data in your file for some fields should be in proper format.
  • We recommend you first do an import with a sample file containing a few contacts before doing the actual import.

Supported File Formats

The supported file formats for importing contacts in Zoho Campaigns are:
  • .csv (Comma Separated Values)
  • .xls, .xlsx (Excel documents)
Maximum file size allowed is 25MB.
NotesNote: If you have your contacts in a csv file, we recommend you open it in a spreadsheet software like Zoho Sheets or MS Excel and do any modifications.

Reading the File

Assuming that you have your contacts in a spreadsheet, you must know how to read the file or how to have a file in the proper format for a hassle-free import.
Let's take an example below for better understanding.

Using the above snippet from an import file, the first row comprises Contact Email and First Name as values. The first column comprises the data of the Contact Email.
  • The first row consisting of the field names is called the header or column header. Under each column header, you'll provide the data belonging to it. For example, under First Name, you'll specify the first names (if any) of the contacts. Column headers shouldn't exceed 255 characters.
  • Each row should have contact information of only one contact. The above image shows details of 4 contacts. The contact info of, let's say, the first and second contacts shouldn't be in a single row.

Field Formats

Extra care must be taken so that some fields are present in proper formats. This not only ensures that the data entered is valid but also helps in an error-free import. Some of the most commonly used field types during an import and how they should be represented in the import file are described below:

Email

Email address or mobile number is a mandatory field. It must be present in your file. The Contact Email column in your file must have only one email address for each contact. Go over this column for any discrepancies, such as:
  • Missing “@” symbol – For example, "jane.doegmail.com" is missing the “@” symbol.
  • Missing "." – For example, "Patrick@yahoocom" is missing the period.
  • Email address with more than 6 characters after the last dot — For example, jane.doe@zylker.incostica
  • Check for any extra spaces before or after the email address.
  • Avoid using hyperlinks in email addresses.

Text

Text field is generally used for first name, last name, company name, and other fields that can contain text-related data. Check for any extra spaces before or after the data specified in the text fields.

Date

Consider that you have the Date of Birth field in your file and you want to have this information in Zoho Campaigns as well. This field will be a date field. The date fields should be specified in MM/dd/yyyy format. Dates in any other format will be ignored. If a contact's birthday is on 1st July, 1992, then it should be specified as 07/01/1992.

Custom Fields 

Custom fields are fields that you can create in Zoho Campaigns to store any additional information. Sometimes, you may want to have some data for your contacts, but you may not find the suitable field in Zoho Campaigns to store it. In such situations, you can create custom fields.

NotesNote: Custom fields can be created in all the pricing plans, including the Forever Free plan.
For example, Zoho Campaigns doesn't have a field for storing the date of birth of your contacts. In this case, you can create a custom field. Another scenario is if you wish to store additional email addresses of your contacts; you can create an email custom field and name it Secondary Email Address.

Zoho Campaigns allows you to create custom fields when you're mapping the fields during the import process itself, thereby not forcing you to navigate to a different section of the app to create these fields.

Phone and Mobile fields

There are a few things to follow when it comes to the Phone and Mobile fields.

In Zoho Campaigns, you can send both Email and SMS Campaigns to your contacts. If you have contacts for whom you send SMS Campaigns, then there must be a Mobile field in your file, and it should have a valid mobile number under it. The mobile number must adhere to the E.164 format. A sample phone number adhering to the E.164 format would be similar to +12345678901, where [+1] is the country code, [234] is the area code, and [5678901] is the subscriber's phone number.
  • If there are contacts for whom you send only email campaigns, the Contact Email field is mandatory.
  • If there are contacts for whom you send only SMS campaigns, the Mobile field is mandatory.
  • If you send both types of campaigns to some contacts, they should have both Contact Email and Mobile data.
Ensure you're mapping the mobile field of your file against the Mobile field of Zoho Campaigns in the field mapping section. Only then can you send SMS campaigns to these contacts after the import.