This article contains the following topics (click on them to jump to the corresponding place):
Preparation
If your contacts are not yet in CSV format, open them with a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc. If necessary, remove columns for which there is no corresponding contact field in Quentn. You can see which contact fields are available in Quentn by editing an existing contact or creating a new one.
Certain contact fields, such as tags or date fields, must be in your table in a specific format in order for Quentn to import them correctly. If certain columns in your record are not in the desired format, you can often modify them using the replace function in your spreadsheet program.
Special fields
Tags
Tags must be listed in a single column for each record (row). The separator used here should either be a comma, semicolon, colon or space.
Example record with tags
| Last name | First name | Tags | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith | John | j.smith@email.de | E-book buyers, Bath additives interest, IM Event 2017 |
Date fields
Date fields (e.g. for the contact field "Date of birth") must always be in the ISO 8601 format. Example: "2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00" or "2004-02-12".
Country field
Countries must be entered in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format. Example: "DE" for Germany or "IT" for Italy.
Salutation field
The salutation field also determines the gender of the contact in Quentn. This is useful, e.g. for automatic gender-specific salutations in emails. However, only a single letter may be used here: "F" for women and "M" for men.
Example record with salutation
| Last name | First name | Salutation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith | John | j.smith@email.de | m |
| Wright | Julie | j.wright@email.de | f |
Save your record in the "CSV" file format. If possible, make sure that the file encoding is in the UTF-8 format and that the separator is either a comma or a semicolon
CSV Import Guidelines
In your own interest, we ask you to take this information seriously. Otherwise, it can easily lead to unexpected results and unnecessary additional work.
Character set
Please make sure that the file was saved in the correct character set. The quentn system expects UTF-8 and will therefore treat the existing data as such. If you do not know which character set you are using, look at the umlauts and special characters. If you are using the wrong character set, these will usually be displayed incorrectly. For example, a Mr. Müller would quickly become Müller. This looks unattractive and unprofessional.
Names and salutation
To ensure your import is successful, the salutation, title, first and last name must be in a separate column. Depending on the system from which the data comes, this is not always guaranteed. Different data is often in the same column or cell. Here are some examples of this:
Name
Smith
John Smith
John
Mr. Smith
Mr. John Smith
Mr. Smith
Mr. Dr. John Smith
Dipl. Ing. (FH) John Smith
John-Charles Smith
John Charles Smith
John Smith-Wright
John Smith Wright
The list could be continued. If you used the complete character string as the salutation in an email, this would normally not be a problem. However, the full range of the software's functions cannot be used in this way, as information such as gender is lost.
Spreadsheet software such as Excel or LibreOffice Calc usually offers the possibility of splitting a column's content using a separator, resulting in several columns. If the above example were to be separated by spaces, it would look like this:
| Smith | ||||
| John | Smith | |||
| John | ||||
| Mr. | Smith | |||
| Mr. | John | Smith | ||
| Mr. | Smith | |||
| Mr. | Dr. | John | Smith | |
| Dipl. | Ing. | (FH) | John | Smith |
| John-Charles | Smith | |||
| John | Charles | Smith | ||
| John | Smith-Wright | |||
| John | Smith | Wright |
...and that leads to the next problem:
Moving columns
In the graphic shown, it is no longer possible to assign any of the columns. Neither first name, last name nor salutation are in the same column. This would lead to chaos when importing.
It would not only "disturb" names and salutation, but also affect all the following columns. If the email address cannot be assigned correctly, the entire contact will be "lost".
Multiple email addresses in one row
From time to time, especially with business contacts, there are several contact persons in one record. If the export is not clean, this can lead to several email addresses ending up in one row, either in the same column or in different ones. In the former case, the entire row would be invalid because the cell under consideration - which should only contain one email address - no longer corresponds to the pattern of a valid address. In the latter case, only the address, which is located in the correct column, would be used. The others would be lost.
Bounces, spam and unsubscribed contacts
Some providers automatically export all contacts, regardless of their status, to the same file and indicate the cancellation date or that the contact has "bounced" in one of the columns. If you want to import contacts into Quentn, please remove all contacts that either:
- Have bounced (hard and soft bounces), i.e. errors occur when attempting delivery
- Have marked us as spam
- Have already unsubscribed from the list.
You are not allowed to send emails to any of these contacts. If you do, it is almost certain that the delivery attempt will fail and your sender reputation will suffer. This will have a negative impact on emails sent in the future, including emails sent to other contacts.
Checklist for successful imports
- Save your CSV file with the UTF-8 character set.
- Make sure that the salutation, title and first and last name are in a separate column. By the way, this data is all you need to create a contact! The email address is not necessary if you can enter the full name and address.
- Make sure that there is no movement of columns in individual rows.
- Ensure there is only one email address per row.
- Remove all contacts from the CSV file that have a status preventing them from being written to in the first place (spam, bounces, subscription cancellations).
- Please note that in the salutation column, "f" stands for a woman and "m" for a man.