Every text campaign begins by gathering contacts. Learn how to import existing ones from a CSV, XLS, or XLSX file.
Keyword-based opt-in is the most popular method for collecting contacts’ information and building a robust list of clients, leads, customers, or others who are interested in receiving your SMS marketing and communications messages.
But perhaps you already have a list of contacts who've opted in to your messaging. If that's the case, MessageMedia makes it easy for you to import them.
MessageMedia Tip — Consent☝️
Compliance and consent are extremely important when adding contacts. If you ever have any doubts, reach out to our customer support team by clicking the profile icon at the bottom left of your screen and selecting Chat with Support.
Preparing Contact Data
- You will need to ensure your contact list is saved as a .csv or .xls file (the optimal file format is CSV UTF-8, Comma delimited)
- If you do not add the international prefix to your contact numbers, the web portal will assume you are importing numbers local to your preset location in your account settings and will validate accordingly.
- With local numbers, you do not need to add the leading zero to the number to successfully import (e.g. if your spreadsheet cells are formatted as "numbers" then a phone number may appear as "412345678" as opposed to "0412345678" - both formats will be accepted for import)
- You can include additional data to your contact list which can then be mapped to the custom fields of each contact profile
Importing Contacts
The Import option appears in both Contacts > All Contacts and Contacts > Contact Lists.
1. Navigate to All Contacts or Contact Lists, depending on your preferred import location:
2. Click on Import at the top left of the page:
3. Upload your data file to the web portal using either the Browse function or Drag & Drop your file straight into the upload window:
- You can select which pre-existing lists to which you would like all contacts imported in the bottom field under "Add to contact lists (optional)"
- You have the option of unsubscribing all of the contacts in the upload (e.g. if you are bulk uploading blacklists from other systems)
4. Match the columns in your data file to the various fields in the contact profile:
- The system will attempt to auto-detect the mobile phone numbers from your spreadsheet; however, if the data that is pulled into the #phone# field is incorrect, you can change it to the correct column.
- If your contact database includes additional information (e.g. in the example shown we have fields such as "Division", "Role" and "Office"), then these can be mapped to the pre-created Custom Fields in the contact profile:
Note - you can also assign your contacts to existing lists by typing the name(s) of the list(s) in the field on top of the mapping table:
Reviewing Import Results
You will then be shown a result of the import in the middle of the screen, along with links for review of successful and failed: