Import phone numbers

If you have your customers' phone numbers, you can upload them to Selzy and use them to personalize the content of your emails.

Preparing the file

File format and size

Selzy supports CSV, XLS, XLSX, and TXT files for uploading phone numbers.

XLS and XLSX files may have additional formatting elements, table borders, formulas, merged cells, and other elements that prevent data from importing correctly. For this reason, we recommend saving XLS and XLSX files as CSV.

The file encoding is set to UTF-8.

The maximum file size is 20 MB.

The maximum number of columns in a file is 50.

Phone numbers format

Phone numbers must be in international format. Start with the + symbol followed by the country code, or just with the country code. For example: +551234567890 or 551234567890.

Importing the file

In your account, go to Contacts — All Contacts and click on the Add Contacts button. The button is also available from the Lists tab and from every email list.

Choose Import a file, if you want to upload a file with phone numbers or Add one contact for adding phone numbers manually.

The import page opens.

There are two ways to import contacts:

From file. Click on the Upload a file button and select the file to be imported. Please double-check if it meets the requirements.

Manually. Go to the Manually tab, add the contacts you want to upload and click Continue.

Next, map the fields. Assign phone numbers to Mobile phone number, Email to emails, and so on.

Additionally, you can control formatting settings by checking and unchecking checkboxes:

• Email address required. When checked, contacts without email addresses will not be added to Selzy.

If you only want to add phone numbers and have not mapped the ‘Email’ field, uncheck 'Email address required.' Otherwise, you will not be able to proceed with the import.

• Phone number required. When checked, contacts without phone numbers will not be added to Selzy.
• Update data values in fields for existing contacts. When checked, previously added contacts will be automatically updated.

Click Continue.

Select the contact list and click Import.

Data import is completed.

If errors occurred during import, click Error reporting to download the report.

The report explains why not all contacts were imported and lists the errors. Common issues include duplicate contacts and errors in email addresses and phone numbers.

Common questions

How are duplicates imported?

Since the Phone field is optional and the Email field is mandatory, the system will only check emails for uniqueness. You can import duplicate phone numbers if the email addresses are different.

Examples:

1. Uploading two contacts:

Email	Phone	Name
[email protected]	+15555550125	Jim
[email protected]	+15555550125	Martha

The phone numbers are the same, but the email addresses are different, so both contacts will be added to the list.

2. Uploading two contacts:

Email	Phone	Name
[email protected]	+15555550125	Martha
[email protected]	+15555550125	Martha

The phone numbers are different, but the email address is the same. Therefore, only the last imported contact with the phone number will be added to the list.

How to replace phone numbers?

If the list contains phone numbers with incorrect or outdated country codes, you need to fix them. Use Excel to update multiple phone numbers at once.

For example, our file has three columns: ‘Email,’ ‘Phone,’ and ‘Name.’ Some phone numbers start with ‘0’ (local UK format), while others start with ‘44’ or ‘+44.’

To fix the numbers that start with ‘0,’ use the formula:

=IF(AND(LEN(B2)=11;LEFT(B2)="0");("+44"&MID(B2;2;10));B2)

Copy it and paste it into an empty cell in an empty column. Then double-click the plus sign in the lower right corner of the cell to apply the formula to the entire column.

How this formula works:

• If the phone number has 11 digits and starts with '0,' the first digit changes to '+44.'
• In all other cases, the number remains the same.

The formula works correctly if the phone numbers are in column B. If your file has a different column  layout, either move the phone numbers to column B or update the formula with the correct column letter.

Replace the old column containing phone numbers with the new one. Enter ‘Phone’ in the upper cell, copy the entire column, and paste it over the old one. Make sure to paste values only; otherwise, the copied formulas won't work.

The file is ready for import.

How to fix mojibake

Sometimes when importing contacts, you may see unreadable characters, such as:

This issue occurs due to mismatched character encoding. To fix it, convert your file encoding to UTF-8.

Useful links:

Personalize email content with merge tags