In this article, you'll learn everything you need to know to upload contacts into Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional).

AutoFTP

AutoFTP lets you manually upload files that contain lists of contacts. These are, in turn, processed by Thrive Marketing Professional as a contact upload. The format of the files must match a data format in your Thrive Marketing Professional account before the files are uploaded through the AutoFTP website.

The AutoFTP site allows users to drag-and-drop files or to browse and upload. Thrive Marketing Professional checks for new files to process every few minutes.

Prerequisites

There are two prerequisites that must be met before you use AutoFTP:

1. You must create the required personal info and demographic fields that you will use in your upload’s data format.
2. You must have a data format in Thrive Marketing Professional that matches the data coming from the AutoFTP process.

NOTE: If you need assistance with accessing AutoFTP, create a case with Higher Logic Customer Support.

Contact upload process

Before you upload contacts into Thrive Marketing Professional, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Have I created Profile Fields in Thrive Marketing Professional? See Profile Fields Overview.
2. Have I created data formats? See Data Formats to Upload Subscribers.
3. Have I saved my list of contacts as a tab-delimited text file? Refer to Understanding contact upload data files, below, to learn more.

If you answered "yes" to all of the above, you're ready to upload your contacts. To do so, follow this three-step process:

Step 1 - Choose a contact upload method

1. Navigate to Contacts > Upload > Contacts.

2. Choose your upload method:

1. Select Upload a file to upload a file from your computer. Select Choose File, and then select the file. Make sure there are no spaces in your file name!

NOTE: Thrive Marketing Professional cannot read a CSV file (such as MS Excel), so ensure that your file is saved as a tab-delimited text file. Email addresses must be located in the first column of your spreadsheet. Once you've formatted your spreadsheet, save it as a Text (Tab Delimited) file. This creates a formatted .txt file that you can upload to Thrive Marketing Professional.

2. Select Enter email addresses to upload a list of email addresses (enter one per line). If you're uploading anything besides just email addresses we recommend using the Upload a file method. Also, if you want to include additional data fields along with email addresses, the following delimiters are accepted: "|", "~", "," and tab.

3. Select your Upload Source from the associated menu. This will allow you to keep track of where the lists you're uploading are coming from. For example, perhaps a batch of business cards were dropped off or you have an attendance sheet from a recent conference.
4. Click Next.

Step 2 - Select a data format

1. Choose the data format to use for this list. Thrive Marketing Professional will present only those data formats that have the same number of columns as the incoming data file. See Data Formats to Upload Subscribers for more information.

NOTE: The data format should have been created before uploading contacts. Thrive Marketing Professional previews the data to help you to choose the appropriate data format. If the data format was not yet created, you can create one by selecting Create New (to learn how to create data formats, check out the link above).

2. Once the data format is selected, click Next.

Step 3 - Select interests

For this step, you will associate interests to the contacts you're uploading. There are two methods to do so: Simple and Advanced.

Simple method

With this method, you'll simply select interests to associate to ALL uploaded contacts.

NOTE: Keep in mind the following:

1. You must select at least one interest for contacts before uploading.
2. Unless otherwise configured, interests will be applied to all contacts being uploaded.
3. Check the Replace Existing Subscribers box to remove all existing contacts from the selected interest(s). The removed contacts will not be unsubscribed—they will be replaced with the email addresses found in your upload list.
4. Check the Remove Existing Subscribers box to remove the uploaded contacts from the selected interests. The removed contacts will not be unsubscribed.
5. Before uploading, consider the "empty Personal Info fields" checkbox. If checked, and your upload contains empty Personal Info fields for an existing contact, any existing data in those fields will be removed (and cannot be retrieved). You may want to use this option if, for example, you want to update specific Personal Info fields for a batch of contacts as part of the upload process.
6. Clicking << Remove will remove all selected interests.

To add one or more interests:

1. Select the interest(s) to associate with the contacts you're uploading; there are two ways to do so:

1. Select existing interests - Any existing interests are listed in the Available Interests box. To use these, click to highlight one or more and then click Select >> to move them to the Selected Interests box.

TIP: To select multiple at once, hold Ctrl or Shift and then make your selections.

2. Create new interest(s) - At the bottom of the dialog is an area enabling you to add an interest on the fly. To do so, give it a name, select the folder where it should reside, and then click Add. The interest displays in the Available Interests box, where you can now click to highlight it and click Select >> to move it to the Selected Interests box.

TIP: To remove an interest, select it in the Selected Interests area and click << Remove. It will move back to the Available Interests area.

2. The interest(s) you're going to associate to the contacts are listed in the Selected Interests box. After verifying this is accurate, click Upload.

A confirmation message displays noting that your contacts are being uploaded. You'll receive a confirmation email when your upload is complete. Click Click Here to view the results in your Upload History (view by navigating to Contacts > Upload > History).

Advanced method

This method enables you to associate interests in a more granular fashion: to all uploaded contacts, to only new contacts, and to existing contacts. The best part is you can split interests into these three buckets. For example, you can associate some interests to all contacts, a few to only the new contacts, and even a few specifically for existing contacts.

NOTE: Keep in mind the following:

1. You must select at least one interest for All contacts or New contacts before uploading.
2. Any interest added to All will be assigned to both New and Existing contacts when uploaded.
3. You cannot add an interest to New or Existing contacts that is already in All contacts.
4. You cannot place an interest into All contacts that is already in New or Existing contacts.
5. Selecting multiple interests from each group and clicking << Remove will remove all selected interests.

To associated interests via this method:

Click Show Advanced Options at the bottom right of the dialog to expand additional options.

Now:

1. Determine which interest(s) you want to associate to each group: All, New, or Existing. There are two ways to do so:

1. Select existing interests - Any existing interests are listed in the Available Interests box. To use these, click to highlight one or more and then click All >>, New >>, or Existing >> to move them to the appropriate box.

TIP: To select multiple at once, hold Ctrl or Shift and then make your selections.

2. Create new interest(s) - At the bottom of the dialog is an area enabling you to add an interest on the fly. To do so, give it a name, select the folder where it should reside, and then click Add. The interest displays in the Available Interests box, where you can now click to highlight it and click All >>, New >>, or Existing >> to move them to the appropriate box.

TIP: To remove an interest, select it in the Selected Interests area and click << Remove. It will move back to the Available Interests area.

2. The interest(s) you're going to associate to each group of contacts are listed in their associated boxes. After verifying they are accurate, click Upload.

Result

A confirmation message displays noting that your contacts are being uploaded. You'll receive a confirmation email when your upload is complete. Click Click Here to view the results in your Upload History (view by navigating to Contacts > Upload > History).

Understanding contact upload data files

As you'd expect, to send messages via Thrive Marketing Professional, you need the email addresses for the people your organization wants to communicate with.

Each email address added to Thrive Marketing Professional becomes a contact. Higher Logic is here to help you to have the best relationship possible with your contacts. Whatever you might call your contacts - members, donors, customers, media contacts, students, clients, government officials - we will help you make communicating with them as effective as possible.

Uploading is the process that takes data from either a file or a list of email addresses you type into Thrive Marketing Professional, and creates contacts in Thrive Marketing Professional. This is done using a delimited text file (usually created in Excel and usually the delimiter is a TAB or |) that includes email address and any other personal information (e.g., first name, last name, organization name, membership date, most recent purchase amount, donor type) that you'll need for targeting or personalizing.

How much data should I upload?

While an email address is absolutely required, having additional data to do personalization and targeting is an extremely good practice to embrace. You don't want to take every single field you have and upload that into Thrive Marketing Professional, but select a meaningful data set that gives you options.

Every field you upload can be used to personalize your message to your contacts. The appropriate use of personalization is a great way to engage your reader. You can, of course, put personalization codes inside your messages, but did you know you can even personalize your subject line and even the friendly from? These are great opportunities for you to create next-level messaging experiences.

This additional data can also be used to create target groups to use to send your messages to. Every additional piece of data gives you another way to segment - or "slice and dice" - your own data.

Header rows

Thrive Marketing Professional doesn't use the header row to extract incoming field names, so it's best if you remove it. Not doing so, however, won't cause a problem because that row will be bypassed during the upload. You will create a data format to map which incoming column goes to a Thrive Marketing Professional field.

Blank columns

Remove any blank columns in your data file. If you're using Excel, make sure that you unhide any hidden columns so you know what's contained in the worksheet. If, by mistake, a blank column is in the data file, Thrive Marketing Professional will interpret that as a column with the expectation that it will be mapped to an existing Thrive Marketing Professional profile info field.

As part of the contact upload wizard, Thrive Marketing Professional presents only those data formats that have the same number of fields as your data file has columns. This means that a data file with five columns of data and two blank columns would be considered as seven incoming columns. Thrive Marketing Professional will present all data formats that have seven fields in the format.

Blank fields

As great as it would be to have every piece of data we need for every contact, that's not always possible. If a field in the data file is blank, Thrive Marketing Professional will bypass it.

Hidden columns

If you're using Excel, make sure that you're aware of any hidden columns in a worksheet. Unhide all columns and then remove those that you don't want to upload to Thrive Marketing Professional.

Special characters

If your data file contains fields with special characters (e.g., a letter with an accent, alternative punctuation, etc.), this may cause challenges down the road, either in creating target groups or in rendering the data when used as a personalization field. Being mindful of special characters is just something to be aware of during your testing.

File formats

If you're creating this file using an export option from another system, be sure to specify that this is at tab-delimited text file format. Other text file types work too, but tab-delimited is the standard.

File names

If you're planning to use the contact upload feature on a regular basis, it's well worth your time to devise a file-naming convention. This should be used by all Thrive Marketing Professional users so that you have consistency. A very common format is YYYYMMDD DescriptiveWord1 DescriptiveWord2 (optional) WhereUsed.

Some examples:

• 20160113 Members Active
• 20161113 Invitees - Emeritus Staff - Annual Lunch
• 20161113 Students - 4 Year - Graduate May 2016

Alternatively, if you are more project focused, you can lead with the event or project label and then add more after that. For example:

• Annual Meeting 2016 - 2015 Attendees - Early Bird Discount - 20160113
• New Product Launch - NP100-01 - Dealer Network Webinar - 20160113
• 5K Run - NY Runners Club invite - 20160113

In addition to creating a good process that everyone can adhere to, a well-crafted file name will also provide visibility as to "what file was loaded when" on the Upload History page.

Tools you can use - Excel

The most common data preparation tool is Excel. Most mature systems have a feature to export to Excel. Once your data is in Excel, you can sort it, filter it, and massage it to ensure it's what you want to upload to Thrive Marketing Professional.

Additionally, you can use Excel's many functions to synthesize new data by combining cells. For example, if you have a First Name column (B2) and a Last Name column (C2), you can concatenate them - with a space in between - into a single column, for Full Name, by using a formula like this:

=B2 & " " & C2

View contact upload history

After a list of email addresses is uploaded into Thrive Marketing Professional, it becomes a target group in the Interest folder. You can see the details of any uploaded list by viewing the upload history.

1. Navigate to Contacts > Upload > History.

See View Contact Upload History for more information.