Contact Fields in the System

This article contains instructions on how to import a file with the contact list into your account in the system.

Preparation

The file formats that are supported for import are: xlsx, xls, csv, and txt.

Before you import your contact list into the system, make sure to check the following:

• Available email and/or phone number are a must for import.
• All contacts must be saved in one worksheet (Excel) and organized into columns. If the file contains two or more worksheets, the system will not process them: only the contacts from the first worksheet will be imported.

When you import contacts into the system, map the columns in your import file to the fields in contact list, using the below dropdown menu. The mapped columns are highlighted green.

Important: fields with errors will not be imported into the system.

Standard Fields

By default, the following standard fields are available for each account:

1. Text Fields

Text fields are designed to include all the available customer data in order to personalize emails and segment the database. They consist of First Name, Last Name, and all columns of the Address fields.

• First Name

The maximum length of the value in the field is 40 characters.
Letters of any alphabet and up to 3 digits are allowed.

Special characters are prohibited, except:

• apostrophes' (in the middle of a word)
• hyphens - (in the middle of a word or between words without spaces)
• a dot at the end of a short (up to 3 characters) word (for example, Jr.)

It is allowed to use 3 words consisting of more than 3 characters and 3 words consisting of a maximum of 3 characters. Names consisting exclusively of numbers and/or special characters are prohibited.

The First name field is used to personalize emails, and can be put both in the body of the message and in the subject line.

• Last Name

The validation rules of the Last name field are the same as for the First name, except that any number of words of any length are allowed (but not more than 40 characters in total).

• Address

The Address fields can consist of several columns with the full postal address of each contact. The field supports text and numbers, and can’t include special characters.

You can add to the field the following categories: Country, Region, City, Street, Post Code, etc. Each category should be organized in a separate column.

• Time zone

When a user clicks on a link in a message, the system registers their IP. If the system can determine the country, region and city from the received IP, the system does this and writes the corresponding time zone into the contact card. Subsequent clicks on the links do not update the time zone, it can only be updated via the API.

You can use the contact's time zone to send triggered messages only at specified hours. To do this, activate the corresponding switcher in the message settings in the workflow.

All messages that have enabled “Sent only at specified hours” will be sent within the specified time window or will be queued for sending within the further specified time window.

• Language

The Language field is to be filled for contact base segmentation and sending multilingual campaigns. It supports text coded according to the international standard of RFC 5646 Language Tags:

"es," "en";

"es-AR" (Spanish, Argentina), "en-US" (English, USA).

These fields are used to create dynamic segments. For example, you need to select all London residents and notify them of the opening of a new store. If you have filled a City column, you can create the segment choosing the necessary condition:

2. Email

This is the main field used to send emails. There is one email line available for each contact. Make sure the email address has no spelling mistakes (gmeil.com, mail..com, etc.). If you want to specify several emails, you may create an additional field, but campaigns will be sent only to the address specified in the main field.

3. Phone Number

The Phone Number field can contain only numbers; no text or special characters are supported.

These contacts are used to send SMS and Viber messages. The number should be specified in the international format:

380955547708

447911123456

0207183 8750

1229501112325

Note: you can import only phone numbers valid in the country that you have selected while registering in the system. If you want to import phone numbers valid in other countries, contact our support.

4. Date of Birth

This field supports the following formats: yyyy-MM-dd, dd/MM/yyyy, dd.MM.yy, dd.MM.yyyy.

Important: this format is supported for a file import only. For an import via API, use only these formats: YY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YY, DD.MM.YY.

5. Contact Key

This field is designed for external contact identifiers and can be useful when you import a database and want to keep the contact ID from the original database.

6. Gender

When importing the contact base, you can choose between the two options - M (male) or F (female) - set by default in the system. If you want to add more options, go to Personal Profile > Settings > Additional Fields > Gender.

Es Contact ID

An internal contact ID is assigned by the system to each contact after the import. It consists of numbers only.

Additional Fields

If standard fields are not enough to include all the necessary data, you can go to Settings and add additional fields. You can add unlimited number of fields in any order.

Choose Add list, type the title of the list and save it.

To add new fields to the new list, click on Add field, fill in Name, and choose a field type from the dropdown list.

In the field type, you can choose one of 8 available options:

• Text box;
• Text area;
• Number;
• Fractional Number;
• Date;
• Date with time;
• Dropdown list;
• Checkbox list.

Text box

Can include up to 1,000 characters, both text and integer numbers. Special characters (for example, % ^ * | ~ {) are not supported.

Text area

Can include a large amount of data of up to 5,000 characters, both text and integer numbers. Special characters are not supported.

Use Text box and Text area to specify:

• position, workplace, etc.;
• number of employees, number of positions;
• any additional data needed to segment your contacts.

Number

Supports only integer numbers in the range from - 2147483648 to 2147483647. Can be used for email personalization and segmentation, for example, based on the amount of bonuses a customer has accumulated.

Fractional Number

Supports fractional numbers.

Date

The supported format: YYYY-MM-DD.

There is a Regular Date option designed to specify a creation date, anniversary, etc.

Tick the corresponding box to use this date to create dynamic segments:

Date with Time

The supported format: YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm

Dropdown List

You can add unlimited number of options, but choose only one of them when creating a contact profile.

Checkbox List

You can add unlimited number of options, and choose any of them when creating a contact profile.

Important: you can also add additional fields right when you map imported columns to the fields in the system.

File Example

To see how contacts can be organized in an Excel worksheet, download our file example. It contains standard fields: subscriber email, first name and last name. You can also add unlimited additional fields, such as phone number, address, etc.

Read the article on how to import a file into the system. Once you import a file into the system, a confirmation email with the import results will be sent to your email address.