Learn how to create a new list in magnews and how to add contacts to it by uploading a file containing their contact information.
Before you get started.
Why use an audience: Enter contacts into an audience for sending communications.
It is important to add contacts to a new audience when they are exported from another email service provider, being started with magnews, or when you collect a list of contacts from an event or via a sign-up form. Keep track of your audiences in “Manage Audiences.”
Before uploading a subscriber list: make sure the list complies with magnews' terms of service and includes only contacts who have directly provided consent and their email.
Import contacts
- In the “Profile studio”, and “Dashboard” section, click on the top right “Import”; if you have more than one database, choose which one to import contacts to.
- The files you can import are in Excel, text (“.txt” or “.csv”) or compressed files (“.zip”). magnews will automatically recognize the file type and formatting.
- If you use a compressed file, remember to keep the original extension as well. The name of a compressed .csv file to be imported will end with “.csv.zipper” and so on.
Select the file to be imported or indicate the address from which to download it.
- Choose the type of operation to be performed, in this case “Import new and update existing contacts”
- Click “Forward”
File parameters
- Indicates whether the first row of the file you are importing contains the column header, if it is present it will be easier to associate them with database fields.
- Confirm to remove unnecessary spaces at the beginning and end of text fields, this setting is on by default.
- Only if you are importing a text file, select the “delimited” option if the fields in your file are separated by a character or tab, otherwise select “fixed width.”
Associate fields
Associate the columns in the file with the fields in the database.
- By clicking on the “associate automatically” button, the platform will automatically perform the association of the preconfigured fields in the file with those in the database.
- Or choose the target fields and select “do not import” to exclude a column from import.
Remember to always associate the field that corresponds to the primary key in the database; it is a required field and allows magnews to know whether it is a new contact or an existing one.
If the data you are importing needs to be placed in new fields you can create them at the mapping stage, indicating the data type and field label.
Once you have associated the fields click “Forward”.
You can set default values for fields that are not in the file you are importing:
- subscription: indicates whether the contacts have been confirmed to be enrolled or not:
- Confirmed: contacts appear to be enrolled and if they have provided explicit consent will begin receiving your communications
- Unconfirmed: contacts have provided data but have not yet confirmed enrollment
- Contact origin : indicates the origin of the contacts
- Signed up from the web: use it for contacts that come from a sign-up form on the site
- Added from account: for contacts manually entered into the database from interface
- Imported from file: if they come from, for example, an event
- receive email, fax, sms: these values are used to enable the receipt of communications
- choose whether to add the contacts in your file to an audience, it will allow you to easily track them in magnews and send them a communication. The options are:
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- new static audience: you can decide that it will delete itself after 14 days or via the link “go to database settings” you can change the duration of the audience (in this case only the audience and not the contacts within it will be deleted)
- existing static audience : to add contacts to the audience already present on magnews
Options
Define some additional rules to guide magnews in importing contacts. You can keep the proposed configurations that are fine in most cases.
Basic Options
- Replace errors with empty values
- Perform an operation for contacts with blacklisted email address, you will be able to:
- Unsubscribe the contact who will no longer receive communications for that database
- Suspend the contact
- Reject the contacts in the file. These contacts will not be imported. In case this is the first database import, only this option will be available.
- Import mobile numbers and apply strict validation to the numbers or try to reclaim them by removing characters such as - /
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It also imports contacts already unsubscribed, which will be returned to the “subscribed” status. Make sure that you have complied with all privacy requirements and that you have the contacts' consent to be re-enrolled in the database.
You can proceed to the next step with the “Validate file” button.
Data verification
- Check the validation result and take a look at the summary of the selected options.
- If you plan to import additional files with the same structure you can save your import template. With import templates you save your selected choices and preferences and then recall them without having to reconfigure all the parameters. Each import template is associated with a single database, and can be used for imports to that database only.
- Click on “Start Import” and you will be shown the new contacts and those that have been updated, you will also be able to see if there are any contacts that have been rejected. The rejected contacts could not be imported for example because of a misspelled email (oliwier@@example.com) or repeated in the file. On this page in addition to the import outcome you will be able to review the original file.
- Click on “Close” to finish the import.
When finished you will see in the dashboard the number of your contacts after the import.