Lead Importer (v1)

                            Looking for the v2 article? Click here.

 

Your CRM provides you with the ability to mass import your Leads in a few easy steps. Before beginning the import procedure, ensure that you've saved the new lead information in a CSV file and that the field names (e.g. Contact, DBA etc.) are saved in first row of the file.

The CRM automatically recognizes the field names and allows you to map them to your Lead fields.

To start your Lead import, click on Leads > Lead Importer:

 

 

The Lead Importer page will open to the Upload a File tab where you can upload or drag and drop your CSV file (you can use  Sample_Lead_Import to test the process).

 

 

Once your CSV file has been uploaded a message will be shown indicating that the initial upload has been completed, meaning that you can progress through the import steps.

Note: If your file has more than 20,000 rows in it, you must put them in separate files to upload, otherwise an error will appear.

Click on the Save & Continue button to move on to the next step of the import process:

 

 

In Step 2, select the default Status, Group, Campaign and the Lead Source labels for the new leads being imported. The links provided on the right side of the drop-down menus allow you to quickly add a new label if needed and apply it to the new leads.

When finished, click on the Save & Continue button to move on to the next step:

 

 

In Step 3, map the identified CSV columns/fields to the appropriate Lead form fields.

If needed, you can also check for duplicate Leads and/or validate the provided email addresses by selecting the check-boxes to the right of the mapping columns:

 

 

For example, if you enable a duplicate-check for the DBA field, and the uploaded CSV file contains the same DBA value as an existing Lead, then the Lead importer will not create a new Lead record for that specific CSV row.

Additionally, if you checked the optional "If Duplicate Found: fill in Field if empty" checkbox, then the Lead Importer will automatically fill in any empty fields found on the duplicate Lead with the corresponding CSV field values. 

Note: Checking for duplicates against more than one field will slow down the import process.

 

Updating Existing Lead's Properties

If you have enabled duplicate checks in your import and lead matches are found by that column-to-field mapping, then you can also update the assigned user, campaign, source, status state, and group for those existing leads (thus effectively using the Lead Importer for mass lead updates). 

For example, to assign a new user to an existing lead, type "Assign to" in the lead field dropdown, and a list of lead assignment options will be displayed. 

You can now select to update the lead's assigned user via the Username or User ID option (depending on what user information you have in your CSV file):

 

 

After you've selected the appropriate option, the Advanced Options column on the right will provide additional options for user re-assignment.

You may choose to assign the new user in addition to the existing user, or you may replace the existing user with the new one:

 

 

You can follow a similar procedure when updating the lead's campaign, source, status state, and group, except here you will need to select the "Overwrite" option in the Advanced Options column:

 

 

Field Validation

When mapping to fields that have a certain Field Type, the validation rules pictured below will be checked when you click Save & Continue at the bottom of the mapping step:

 

Mapping Date Fields

When you map an imported field to a lead Date field, then you will also need to select the appropriate format of the date field in the imported file:

 

 

The following date formats are supported:

 

 

Importing to Record Sets

A Record Set is a type of lead tab that allows replication of a group of lead fields. This is most commonly used to keep track of objects for a lead that can vary in number, such as contacts or equipment.

For example, for a contact, the fields in the record could be First Name, Last Name, Phone, Email, and Title. In the lead when you click Add Contacts under the Contacts tab, the same fields appear again in another section right below, and as many Contacts as needed can be created by clicking Add Contacts again.

To import this information with your leads, each set of fields should be located in order in your CSV file, and each mapped to the field that they will go in.

Since the number of records in the lead can vary, there isn't a need to map the columns by number, but naming them with a number in your file can help make sure they are all present. Here's an example:

Column → Field
ContactFirstName1 → Contact First Name
ContactLastName1 → Contact Last Name
ContactPhone1 → Contact Phone
ContactEmail1 → Contact Email
ContactTitle1 → Contact Title

ContactFirstName2 → Contact First Name
ContactLastName2 → Contact Last Name
ContactPhone2 → Contact Phone
ContactEmail2 → Contact Email

ContactTitle3 → Contact Title
ContactFirstName3 → Contact First Name
ContactLastName3 → Contact Last Name
ContactPhone3 → Contact Phone
ContactEmail3 → Contact Email
ContactTitle3 → Contact Title

All the columns must exist for each set of records you are importing since the importer is reading them in order.

If ContactLastName1 didn't exist but ContactLastName2 did, when importing the ContactLastName2 would be the first column found mapped to Contact Last Name, and so it would import the value with ContactFirstName1.

Email Validation
If you wish to validate the email addresses during the import, you can choose to save the invalid emails in a separate email field (in order to retain the imported information), or to simply delete such emails and not import them into the system:

 

 

If a CSV field you wish to map does not have a corresponding field on the Lead form, you can add such a field to the Lead form quickly by clicking on the Add New Lead Field button and then entering/selecting the new field's settings:

 

 

Once you finish setting up your field mapping click the Save & Continue button to move on to the next step:

 

 

 

 

The last steps of the import process are performed on the Import Activity tab. On this tab, you can preview the information on your imports in progress, pending imports and finished imports.

A new import that you have created will appear in the Pending Imports report, which provides the following actions:

1. Edit Defaults — Go back to Step 2 and modify the default labels if needed
2. Edit Mapping — Go back to Step 3 and modify the field mapping settings if needed
3. Start Import — Add the new import to the upload queue

 

 

When you are ready to begin your import click on the Start Import button in order to add it to the import queue. A confirmation message will appear indicating the new data has been successfully scheduled for import:

 

 

You will also find your new import in the Import In Progress report:

 

 

Once your import is processed, details about the import will be shown in the Finished Imports report.

To view the new leads click on the Total Leads Importer number link, and the leads will be shown on the My Leads By Status State page:

 

For imports that created leads, a Delete button will show, and clicking it will remove the new leads. If the import only updated leads, there is no Delete option.