Prepare a contact list for your first SMS campaign
Your spreadsheet has 500 rows. How many will become new contacts? Start with the phone column, then use the import results to account for the difference.
Put the numbers on the first sheet
Open the contact list you want to fill and choose Import contacts. SMS Studio accepts CSV and XLSX files with a header row. For an Excel workbook, it reads the first worksheet. If yours opens on a summary or pivot table, move the contact sheet to the front before uploading.
Give each person a row and each field a column. Keep the country code with each number, especially if one list covers several countries. Format the phone column as text before entering numbers so the spreadsheet preserves the digits.
Match your headings to the contact fields
Choose the file and select Continue. Under Import as, map the column containing mobile numbers to Phone. Your headings can use the names your team already knows.
Customer mobile → Phone
Given name → First name
Store location → Custom field
Last receipt number → Skip
Check the mapping before choosing Start import. Mapping a receipt number to Phone by mistake can leave you with a long list of failed rows.
Read the result before budgeting the send
Suppose the summary for your 500 rows shows 475 added, 15 duplicates, 6 suppressed and 4 failed. You’ve added 475 contacts. A duplicate can be a number that was already in the destination list. Suppressed numbers are skipped because they’re blocked from receiving messages. Focus corrections on the failed rows, such as a phone number missing digits.
If an interrupted job offers Resume import, use it to continue from the saved position. When you plan the campaign, use the recipient count for the selected list and check how many SMS segments your draft uses.