Data Imports

Your Initial Data Migration

When we set up your account, we migrate your existing data — members, prospects, mailing lists — from wherever it currently lives (spreadsheets, previous CRM, email marketing tool, etc.).

Every imported contact is tagged so you know where the data came from and what you can do with it:

• Contacts from your previous system get a data origin tag (e.g., data-origin-activecampaign)
• Current members get the data-existing-member tag
• Contacts who had marketing consent carry over the gdpr-marketing-yes tag
• Contacts on your mailing list get the newsletter-subscriber tag

If a contact was not opted in to marketing in your previous system, they won't carry the gdpr-marketing-yes tag, which means they won't appear in your marketing lists. This is intentional — it keeps you GDPR compliant.

All imported contacts retain their marketing consent status from your previous system. We don't add marketing consent where it didn't exist before.

Your onboarding guide lists every import that's been done, what tags were applied, and what data was brought across.

Importing New Data Yourself

If you need to import additional contacts — a new batch of members, a list from an event, updated data from another system — you can do this yourself via CSV import.

Before you import

1. Clean your data — remove duplicates, fix formatting, delete junk entries
2. Standardise phone numbers — strip formatting and add the +44 prefix for UK numbers
3. Validate email addresses — remove obviously invalid entries
4. Custom fields are already set up — Membership Type, Handicap Index, CDH Number, etc. are ready to map to. If you need additional fields, ask us before importing.
5. Prepare a Tags column — include the correct tags:
   • data-existing-member for current members
   • gdpr-marketing-yes for contacts with marketing consent
   • newsletter-subscriber for newsletter opt-ins
   • source-import for all imported records
   • Separate multiple tags with commas
6. Test with a small batch — import 10-20 rows first to check field mapping before doing the full import

How to import

1. Go to Contacts and click Import
2. Upload your CSV file (max 30 MB — split larger files into batches)
3. Map your CSV columns to CAPTURE fields — the system will auto-match where it can, but check each one
4. Choose duplicate handling — CAPTURE checks for existing records by Contact ID, then Email, then Phone. Matches are updated, not duplicated.
5. Review and import

Each row needs at least one of: Name, Email, or Phone.

After importing

• Check the import stats for errors
• Download the error log if needed
• Verify a few records to make sure data mapped correctly
• Apply any additional tags via bulk actions if needed
• Create or update a Smart List for the imported group — include the date in the name so your team knows when it was last refreshed