Importing Contacts and Custom Identifiers

When migrating from an existing loyalty platform or introducing custom customer codes, utilizing the system's batch import framework is highly efficient. This lesson covers how to upload bulk contact lists, map column data to backend system attributes, handle subscription statuses, and assign secondary identifiers (like numeric strings or license plates) to your existing users.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding Identifiers: By default, the platform relies on a customer’s email address as their primary unique identifier. However, you can attach alternative unique identifiers to account profiles—such as specific strings of numbers, letters, or license plates—to accommodate legacy data or custom tracking hardware.

• The Required Two-Step Import Process: If you are importing users who require custom identifier tracking codes, you cannot upload everything in a single step. You must execute a strict two-part sequence:

  1. First, import the raw contacts using their email address to establish their primary account profiles in the database.

  2. Second, run a separate identifier import using a multi-column file containing both the contact's email address and their new custom code to bind the values together.

• Executing the Initial Contact Import: Under the main contacts workspace, clicking the import option allows you to upload a standardized CSV file. The system displays a preview grid showing your column structures and total row counts (e.g., verifying a list of 30 contacts). From there, you manually map your raw columns directly to backend attributes, linking first name, last name, and your mandatory primary email fields.

• Setting Import Subscription States: The upload wizard includes a dedicated step to define global opt-in statuses for your imported batch. You can bulk-subscribe or bulk-unsubscribe the incoming group from explicit marketing lists or specialized content feeds. Operational/functional transaction email settings are omitted from this screen because users cannot opt out of critical system receipts.

• Binding Custom Bulk Identifiers: To add bulk alternative identification tags, navigate to the identifiers dashboard, select import, and toggle your import parameters to Create new identifiers for existing contacts. Upload your updated file (which includes a dedicated column for the custom code values alongside their matching profile email addresses). To ensure clean processing, map your unique value column to the system's Identifier value field, and explicitly mark legacy first/last name columns as Do not import.

• Manual Profile Customization: For one-off adjustments, you can append a secondary tracking code directly within an individual contact profile. By manually entering an unique value string (e.g., 100897) and selecting the destination user email account, that customer can be looked up or processed interchangeably using either their email address or their newly assigned fallback token.

Dashboard Checklist

1. Navigate to CRM > Contacts and click the Import button in the top right-hand corner.

2. Upload your contact CSV file, align the data columns to their corresponding First name, Last name, and Email dashboard attributes, and click to continue.

3. Establish your batch subscription marketing consent preferences, input an internal reference name for the file batch, and click Import.

4. Move to CRM > Identifiers and click Import to start your secondary linkage workflow.

5. Select Create new identifiers for existing contacts, upload your identifier CSV file, map the Email address and Identifier value columns, and mark name fields to be skipped.

6. Complete the file naming steps, hit Import, and check an individual contact card's Identifiers tab to verify that both the email and alternative default parameters are active.