You can import purchased or rented mailing lists from external sources for use in campaign segments, using the names, postal addresses, e-mail addresses, and other information in the lists to target your campaigns. ATG Outreach also helps you manage lists by tracking their source and date of expiration, and it allows you to purge the names of non-engaged customers or prospects when a list has expired.
ATG Outreach supports importing lists that are in CSV (comma-separated-value) files (also known as comma delimited files). CSV files are plain text files with a .csv extension that store data in a very simple format, with one record on each line and fields within that record separated by commas. The first line defines the columns of data. In the example below, the columns are email, name1, name2, and state. Each line after that represents a record for a customer.
email,name1,name2,state jrodriguez@example.com,Jennifer,Rodriguez,MA bwilson@example.com,Betty,Wilson,IL ewhite@example.com,Edson,White,CA mgant@example.com,Mary,Gant,CT bwilliams@example.com,Brett,Williams,NC
During the import process, you specify the properties in the profile repository where you want to store each column of data (see the next section). You can use any available property you like for any column; for example, you can choose to store Marital Status data in an unused property called Favorite Food. You cannot, however, create completely new profile properties simply by importing the columns in the list. If you wanted to store Marital Status data in a property called Marital Status, and there was no existing property by that name, the system administrator would have to extend the profile to include that property before you imported the data.
Notes:
Make sure that none of the column headers include non-alphanumeric characters (for example “.” or “?”). These characters are not supported for use with the Skip This Column option described in the next section.
The number of commas for each row in the imported list must be correct, regardless of whether any field is empty, or the import operation may fail. For example, the list below contains four columns separated by three commas:
firstname,lastname,city,stateThe following entry contains commas in all expected positions and imports correctly, even though one field is empty:
jim,,boston,MAThe following entries fail:
jim,jones,,,,MA
,jones,boston,MA,As a guide, importing one million profiles takes approximately six hours depending on your environment.
