This article describes how to upload a prepared list of contacts into Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) via our standard "contact upload process." You can use this process to more easily manage the contact records in your Thrive Marketing Professional account because, with a single upload, you can:

• create new records and
• update existing records.

TIP: Alternatively, you can use AutoFTP to upload lists of contact records, as described in Use AutoFTP to Upload Contacts.

Upload file vs email addresses

Step 1 of the three-step upload process gives you two options for creating and updating your contact records:

• Upload a file - you upload a file that contains a list of contacts' email addresses.
• Enter email addresses - you manually input the email addresses of contacts.

TIP: Both of these methods allow you to include additional information (other than just email addresses) about your contacts; Upload a file is the better method for this.

The Upload a file method is the focus of this article.

Other upload options

In addition to the standard contact upload process, you can:

• Upload files via AutoFTP. Refer to AutoFTP, later in this article.
• Upload distinct lists of contacts who have opted-out, unsubscribed, and resubscribed. To learn more, see Upload Contacts - Opt-Outs, Unsubscribes, and Resubscribes.

Prepare for the upload

There is some prep required in order to upload files via the contact upload process.

• Profile Fields - Create (if not already available) the Personal Info and Demographics Profile Fields that you'll need to map the upload data to. See Create & Manage Profile Fields.
• Data Format - Create (if not already available) a data format that is populated with the profile fields that you want to incoming data to be mapped to. See Data Formats for Uploading Contacts.
• Tab-delimited Text File - Create a list of contacts as a tab-delimited text file. Refer to Prepare your upload file, below, to learn more.

Prepare your upload file

In order to ensure a successful upload of the file that contains your list of contacts, it's imperative that the upload file be properly formatted, populated, and be the valid file type. This section provides information for you to properly prepare your upload file.

Data Formats and upload file columns

It's important to note that the number of columns of data in your upload file has to match the number of fields in your intended Data Format.

This is because, during the upload process, Thrive Marketing Professional presents only those Data Formats that have the same number of fields as your upload file has columns.

If an upload file has five populated columns and two blank columns, Thrive Marketing Professional interprets this as seven incoming columns and, during the upload, will present only those Data Formats that have seven fields. This could result in your intended Data Format not being presented for data mapping.

Choose your contact data

You must include an email address for every contact; the email address is the basis for a contact record in Thrive Marketing Professional. You can include additional personal information for each contact (e.g., first name, last name, organization name) in the upload file in order to have that information added to the contacts' records.

This additional personal information:

• should be focused and useful; that is, don't simply include all contact data.
• must be correctly delimited; refer to Upload file: type and name, below.
• can be used to add personalization in messages (including the subject line and friendly from field).
• can be used to create target groups for your mailings.

Upload file type

The contact upload process requires that the upload file be a delimited text file type, in which the delimiter can be either a Tab keystroke or a pipe character ( | ).

TIP: A tab-delimited text file (.TXT) is the required file type for the upload process.

Delimited Text files can be created in a variety of software applications, but the most common is a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel. If you use a spreadsheet application, the Save action might default to .CSV or .XLSX; so, be sure to save the file as a Tab-delimited Text (.TXT) file.

Upload file name

Do not use spaces in the name of the upload file.

We recommend using hyphens ( - ) and underscores ( _ ) to ensure a successful upload, as in the following examples in which the last six digits are the date of the upload.

• 2024-Active-Members_042524
• 2024-Annual-Conference-Attendees_090924

TIP: If you anticipate frequent uploads, you should devise a file-naming convention that works for your account and then share it with other Admins to ensure consistency. Well-crafted and consistent file names also simplify locating upload activities on the Upload History page.

Upload file contents

This section provides information that you might find useful when creating a file for the upload process.

Data delimiters

You can use any number of applications to create your upload file, but the most common and convenient is a spreadsheet application, such as Microsoft Excel or Apache OpenOffice Calc.

These are the more convenient applications because the columns act as the delimiters.

Whereas, if you use a basic text-editor application (e.g., Editpad, or Windows Notepad), you have to delimit the values (i.e., the data) with one of the following delimiters.

• Tab keystroke
• Pipe character ( | )
• Tilde character ( ~ )
• Comma character ( , )

Below are examples of each of the three character-type delimiters.

joe@higherlogic.com,Joe,Smith,Treasurer

mary@higherlogic.com~Mary~Santana~Auditor

ashah@higherlogic.com|Atul|Shah|Developer

NOTE: In your upload file, do not use multiple types of delimiters; choose one and use it throughout!

Header row

The upload process does not use the header row to extract incoming field names. The data in the upload file are mapped to data formats in your account.

• Higher Logic recommends removing the header row.
• Not doing so will not cause any problems during the upload because that row is ignored.

Hidden and Blank columns

If you use a spreadsheet application that allows you to hide columns:

• Unhide all columns and
• Delete those that you don't want included in the upload

Remove any blank columns in the file. If the file has a blank column, Thrive Marketing Professional will interpret that as a column with the expectation that it will be mapped to a Profile Field.

• Refer to Data Formats and upload file columns, above.

Blank cells

If a cell in the upload file is blank (no data/value for a contact), Thrive Marketing Professional will simply bypass it.

Date fields

When working with date fields, consistently use the same date format. The upload process does not convert dates, so your consistency with dates is important. Both of the following formats are valid.

• MM/DD/YYYY
• DD/MM/YYYY

Special characters

An upload file that contains "special characters" (e.g., a letter with an accent, alternative punctuation) will not adversely affect the upload process.

However, these characters might cause challenges in future, such as when creating target groups or in rendering the data when used as a personalization field.

Be mindful of this possibility when including special characters in your upload file.

NOTE: Refrain from using any of the characters that are recognized as data delimiters (described above); using these could result in unexpected separation of data in the upload file.

Contact upload process

NOTE: Some images of the upload wizard in this article reference "Subscriber." This is legacy terminology that has been replaced by "Contact," but which still appears in various places across the interface.

TIP: If you have not uploaded Contacts via this process before, we recommend that you review the information in Prepare your upload file in order to ensure that you correctly prepare your upload file and data; doing so will avoid upload issues and delays.

The sections that follow detail the three-step upload process.

Step 1 - Choose an upload method

In this step, you can choose an Upload Method: a file or email addresses.

TIP: If you're uploading data other than just email addresses, the Upload a file is the better method.

For this article, we'll use the file-upload method.

NOTE: If you were to select Enter email addresses, you'd then manually input (type or paste) the email addresses, one per line, in the text field that replaces the Choose File option. This option is described in Manually input contact data, below.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Upload > Contacts.

2. Choose Upload a file.

3. Click Choose File to select your saved tab-delimited file.
4. Upload source - Optionally, select an Upload source from the dropdown menu. Use this to indicate the source of this upload, such as those who visited your booth at a recent conference or trade show.
5. Subscriber delivery format - Accept the default (HTML version) or click the dropdown to select Text version as the format of email messages that are sent to the contacts who are included in this upload.

• • If you check the Apply to existing subscribers box, the selected email-message format will be applied to messages sent to any existing contacts who are included in this upload, irrespective of their current message-format settings. Also, refer to Manage Contact's delivery formats, below.

NOTE: Subscriber delivery format is an optional extension that can be enabled upon request. If this option does not display in your account, create a case with Higher Logic Support and request that it be enabled.

5. Click Next.

Manage Contact's message formats

You can manually manage the message format for individual contacts.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Search.
2. Hover on the options menu to the left of the contact you want to manage and choose Modify.
3. On the Edit tab, click the Format dropdown and choose either HTML or Text.
4. Click Submit.

Step 2 - Select a data format

In this step, you choose which data format to use for mapping the data in the upload file to your contacts' records.

Thrive Marketing Professional presents only those data formats that have the same number of columns as the incoming data file has delimited fields. See Data Formats for Uploading Contacts for more information.

NOTE: Best practices indicate that the data format be created before starting the upload process because Thrive Marketing Professional previews the incoming data in order to present the eligible data formats. However, you can create a data format from here by selecting Create New and following the instructions in Data Formats for Uploading Contacts.

1. Accept the Default data format (recommended if the upload file is populated with email addresses only) OR;

• • click the dropdown and choose a data format OR;
  • click Create New to create a data format.

2. Click Next.

Step 3 - Apply interests

In this step, you apply interests to the contact records in the upload file. There are two methods to do so: Simple and Advanced.

NOTE: With both of these methods, you can create interests via the Create new interest option in the lower left of the dialog and they will display as Available Interests. In the examples in this section, we'll use existing interests.

Simple method

With this method, you simply select interests to apply to all contact records in the upload file.

Notes

• You must select at least one interest to apply to the contact records in the upload file.
• Unless otherwise configured, selected interests will be applied to all contact records in the upload file.
• Check Replace existing subscribers to remove all existing contacts from the selected interests. The removed contacts will not be unsubscribed—they will be replaced with the email addresses in the upload file.
• Check Remove existing subscribers to remove the uploaded contacts from the selected interests. The removed contacts will not be unsubscribed.
• Consider the "empty Personal Info fields" checkbox. If it's checked and your upload contains empty Personal Info fields for an existing contact, the existing data in those fields will be removed (and cannot be retrieved). You may want to use this option, for example, to update specific Personal Info fields for a batch of contacts as part of the upload process.

To apply interests:

1. Select one or more interests in the Available Interests field.

TIP: You can select multiple interests by using the standard multi-select options.

2. Click Select >> to apply them to the Selected Interests field.
3. After reviewing the Notes above, check any of the boxes below the Selected Interests field.

TIP: To remove an interest, select it in the Selected Interests field and click << Remove. It returns to the Available Interests field.

4. Review your selections and then click Upload.

After the upload

• A message confirms that your contacts are being uploaded.
• A confirmation email message is sent to you when your upload is complete. In it, the Click Here link takes you to the Upload History page in Admin.
• You can directly navigate the Upload History page: Contacts > Upload > History.
• The list of contact email addresses becomes a Target Group in the Interest folder.

Advanced method

Use this method to apply the various interests:

• to all contacts in the upload file,
• to new contacts only, and/or
• to existing contacts only.

For example, you can apply Interest_AA to all of the contacts in the upload file; apply Interest_BB to just the new contacts in the upload file; and apply Interest_CC to the contacts in the upload file who already exist in your account.

Notes

• You must apply at least one interest to either All contacts or New contacts before running the upload.
• An interest that is applied to All contacts will also be applied to New contacts and Existing contacts when uploaded.
• An interest that is applied to either New contacts or Existing contacts cannot be applied to All contacts. However, it can be removed from either New contacts or Existing contacts and then be applied to All contacts.
• Select interests in All contacts, New contacts, or Existing contacts and click << Remove to return them to Available Interests where they can be applied as preferred.

To apply interests via this method:

1. Click Show Advanced Options at the bottom right of the dialog to display the advanced-options layout.

2. Select one or more interests in the Available Interests field.

TIP: You can select multiple interests by using the standard multi-select options.

3. Click All >>, New >>, or Existing >> to apply them to the appropriate field.
4. Repeat these steps to apply other Available Interests to your contacts.
5. Review your selections and then click Upload.

After the upload

• A message confirms that your contacts are being uploaded.
• A confirmation email message is sent to you when your upload is complete. In it, the Click Here link takes you to the Upload History page in Admin.
• You can directly navigate the Upload History page: Contacts > Upload > History.
• The list of contact email addresses becomes a Target Group in the Interest folder.

Manually input contact data

The first step of the upload process, the upload-method selection, gives you two options:

• you can upload a file (as discussed throughout this article) or
• you can manually input one or more contact email addresses, as well as other contact data.

This section focuses on the latter.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Upload > Contacts.
2. Choose Enter email addresses.

3. In the Email addresses field, specify the contacts' email addresses, as well as other personal information, as shown above. Refer to Manual input notes, below.

NOTE: Remember: Do not enter spaces after the delimiters.

4. Click Next.

Step 2 offers a preview of your incoming data.

At this step, you can:

• • Accept the Data Format that is presented;
  • Click the dropdown to select a different Data Format; or
  • Click Create New to create a Data Format for this upload.

5. Click Next.

Manual input notes

Review the following notes so that you know what to expect when manually uploading contact information.

• Email address must be the first value on each line entry.
• Make sure that any other values you're including have been added to your target Data Format to ensure proper data mapping.
• Other values must be delimited by one of the approved delimiters:
  • Pipe ( | )
  • Tilde ( ~ )
  • Comma ( , )
  • Tab keystroke
• Use must use only one type of delimiter. In the unlikely event that you switch delimiters, the system won't recognize the lines of data after the switch is made.
• If Thrive Marketing Professional cannot find an appropriate Data Format based on the number of delimited values in the Email addresses field, you'll be prompted to create one in step 2.
  
  

NOTE: The delimiter type that you used in the Email addresses field is detected and automatically preselected on the "create" dialog; do not change it!

View contact upload history

To see the details of an uploaded list:

1. Navigate to Contacts > Upload > History.

See View Contact Upload History for more information.