Importing contacts from a CSV
Bring your existing book across from a spreadsheet. Duplicates merge rather than doubling up, and nobody is emailed or invited.
The importer is on the Clients screen, behind the Import button. Only company owners and admins see it.
Two things it never does: it never creates a duplicate where it can merge instead, and it never emails or invites anybody. Importing is silent from your contacts' point of view.
Before you start
Your file needs a header row — the first row should be your column names. Two limits apply:
- 5 MB maximum file size.
- 5000 rows per import. Split a bigger file and run it more than once.
Step 1 — Upload
Drop the CSV onto the upload area or click Choose file.
Step 2 — Match your columns
Marketli guesses each column's meaning from its heading — common names like email, first name, surname, mobile and dob are recognised automatically. Check each dropdown and correct anything it got wrong. The roles available are:
Full name, First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Birthday, and Don't import.
Every column is optional. A row is imported as long as it gives Marketli something to identify the person with; rows with no usable email, phone or name are skipped.
Birthdays are read as either YYYY-MM-DD or d/m/y. Anything it cannot parse confidently is dropped rather than guessed at.
Step 3 — Read the preview
You get counts of new, will merge, need review and skipped, plus warnings where they apply — for example that some rows have no name and will be named from their email address, or that some rows repeat an email already in the file and will merge into one contact.
Below that is a row-by-row table with a badge and a reason on each, such as That phone number already belongs to Jane Smith. The first 300 rows are shown; all of them will be imported.
Two options worth setting
Tag these contacts — pick a tag and every contact this import touches gets it. That is the easiest way to find them all afterwards. It is not an undo: merges only fill in blank fields, so nothing you have already filled in gets overwritten.
These contacts have agreed to receive marketing email — leave this unticked if you are not sure. Ticking it never removes consent someone already gave, but do not tick it speculatively.
Step 4 — Import
Click Import {n} contacts. Progress runs in batches. When it finishes you get a summary of how many were added, merged, need review, skipped and failed.
If the import stops partway, everything already imported is kept and you can safely run the same file again — the merge logic stops it doubling up.
After importing
You can call, text and email these contacts individually straight away. Sending them marketing email additionally needs your own verified sending domain, which is set up under Company → Email.
Still stuck? Email help@marketli.app.