Overview
When importing leads to a campaign, there are several best practices that we recommend to ensure that leads go through successfully with minimal issues.
Telephone Number Formatting
When uploading a lead file via CSV, it's possible that the formatting of a telephone number gets altered when using Excel.
For example, a telephone number may lose the 0 at the beginning, or Excel may compress a number into a '123E+08' format, which if uploaded will then flag as an invalid lead.
To prevent this from occurring, we recommend always submitting a telephone number with the country code in brackets.
This will not only ensure that the leads are submitted as a full number, but if you have leads from multiple countries this will ensure the number is checked against the right country.
Miscellaneous Field Type Formatting
There are some pre-defined field types used by the Convertr platform that require specific value formatting.
'Optin' Form Field Type
This is a pre-defined Convertr field used to capture the decision of accepting the data processing for submitting a form, and the methods of contact for any followup marketing.
If this field is included in your Lead Import CSV template, the columns generated will be as below:
- terms - Value formatting should be 0 or 1
- contactTypes - Value formatting should be comma separated (not case sensitive), e.g. Email, SMS, Post
Formatting example in CSV file:
Erasing Blank Rows/Columns
Sometimes when using Excel, blank rows/columns may be formatted in a way that the platform will read these as extra leads.
This means you may not be able to upload as you've exceeded your allocation, or you could end up uploading empty, invalid leads.
To ensure that this doesn't occur, we recommend always manually deleting these rows and columns before uploading.
This can be done by selecting the first empty row below your lead data, and clicking Ctrl+Shift+Down (Cmd+Shift+Down on Mac OS). Once all rows are highlighted, click Delete at the top to completely erase these rows.
Similarly, you can do the same for columns by selecting the first empty column next to your lead data, clicking Ctrl+Shift+Right (Or Cmd+Shift+Right on Mac OS), and deleting these columns.
Using the Convertr Template CSV
While you can upload any CSV to the platform with your lead data, we recommend that you always use the template provided by the platform.
This is useful as it already contains the field names that are available on the form/lead template for that campaign.
In addition, this will allow the fields to map automatically from the CSV file to the platform, meaning that you do not have to manually do this when you upload.
The template CSV can be downloaded for any campaign - to do this, when you start the import process and select a form, you can click 'here' to download our template.
Select Publisher and Channel to improve reporting
During the import leads process, the setup tab is used to apply additional metadata to your lead data. Some of the options can enhance your reporting experience:
- Publisher selection
- Selecting a publisher from this dropdown will allow you to attribute the leads from your upload to that publisher. Although not required, it is recommended to select a publisher to be able to effectively track lead attribution through reporting.
- You can only select publishers that are assigned to and active on this campaign, follow the Assigning a Publisher to a Campaign guide.
- If you do not have any publishers, follow the Creating a Publisher guide.
- Link selection
- Selecting a link will allow you to attribute the Channel from that link to your lead upload. Similar to the above, this step is not required but it is recommended to select a link to be able to effectively track lead channels/sources through reporting.
- If you do not have any links to select, follow the Creating Tracking Links guide.
Test Leads
When importing to a campaign for the first time, we always recommend that you send 1 or 2 test leads through before submitting your batch.
This is because if there is an issue with your leads that is causing them to be invalid, then you can troubleshoot this before going ahead with your full upload.
If you do have invalid leads when uploading, always ensure you are following all criteria provided by the client in your lead data, and that telephone/email addresses are formatted correctly.
One Login Per User
Each user account can be assigned to a particular publisher, and you can assign as many users to one publisher as needed.
We recommend that each person that needs access to the platform is given their own user login, for security purposes as well as to ensure that any publisher activity can be tracked to a specific user.