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Uploading data into your Airship account
Uploading data into your Airship account

If you have data outside Airship that you need to import, here’s how to do it.

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Written by Anthony Green
Updated over a week ago

Airship has a tool that you can use to upload a CSV of customer data to your account. Data can be uploaded on a per unit basis, to an existing group or a new group. 

Before you start: 

  • GDPR, GDPR, GDPR! Make sure you have the customers’ consent for using and importing their data. See our tips on consent and GDPR.

  • We recommend you only import customer data for people who have opted in. However, if you have different consent types, such as opted in for emails but not for SMS, then you should add a column for each consent type and mark this a ‘Y’ or ‘N’  for each applicable row.  If not applicable for a row, you would just leave the cell in that column blank.

  • Make sure you have the correct headers! Your spreadsheet should at least have either an ‘email address’ column and/or a ‘mobile number’ column. 

  • The Console will automatically identify fake email addresses and mobile numbers, prompting you to update these before completing the import. It is really important that you only import clean data. For more info on how to clean your data click here.

  • If you have other information such as date of birth or first name/last name, you can also add that too as a new column.

Your data should look something like the below:

Once you have your spreadsheet ready you can start the upload!

  • Log onto the Console.

  • From the left hand side click Tools > Data Uploader. 

Selecting where your data will be saved

  • From here you can choose if you want your data to be uploaded on a per unit basis, to an existing group or a new group.

  • The next section asks you to select the consent for email, SMS and postal mail. 

  • You can choose whether to opt-in/opt-out the entire spreadsheet, or use the information from your spreadsheet if you have multiple consent types. 

  • If you have empty cells for consent in your spreadsheet these contacts will be opted-out. 

  • If your spreadsheet has contact data that is already in Airship, you might want to preserve the consent that’s already stored in Airship. This way, if an existing customer has opted-out, it means that you are not overriding their consent by re-importing this contact as an opted-in contact. 

  • Finally, when you are importing brand new contacts and you have your Welcome Emails journey set up, you should tick this checkbox so all your new customers benefit from your offers and discounts. 

  • Click ‘Next’ to continue.

  • On the next screen, choose your CSV file to upload. Other file formats are not supported. 

Supported data format

The following headers can be included in your CSV and then mapped to Airship fields:

  • Gender

  • Title

  • First Name

  • Surname

  • DOB

  • Build Name

  • Build Number/Street

  • Locality

  • PostCode

  • City

  • Country

  • County

  • Mobile Number

  • Email

  • Membership Number

  • Membership Type

  • SMS Opt-In

  • Email Opt-In

  • Mailer Opt-In

  • Click ‘Upload’ to start the upload process. Depending on the size of the CSV, this may take a while, keep your browser open in the background until it has completed the upload.

  • You will be asked to match the headers in your spreadsheet with the relevant headers in Airship. 

  • Click ‘Next’.

  • If you have any errors in your file such as invalid mobile numbers or emails you will see them on the screen highlighted in red. 

  • Remove or adjust any of these errors as appropriate before continuing with the process. Errors could include spaces after email addresses, mobile numbers with an incorrect amount of characters, or incorrect titles or postcodes. 

  • Click ‘Save Changes’.

  • Then, click ‘Save Data’.

  • Once the import has completed, you will see a summary with the number of contacts imported, or the contacts that were already in the system and their information was updated. 

And there you have it! Now that you have imported your contacts, why not check how to send your first email? Click here to learn how to do this. 

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