High-level steps
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Prepare your CSV file
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Create a "list" the data will be uploaded to
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Upload your CSV file to your "list"
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Tips
Preparing your CSV File
Creating a "List"
Skip this section if you already have a list created
Lists are an important aspect for outbound calling. This is where your data is housed within the Ytel system. Lists generally are assigned a specific ID and Name to help identify the type of data they house.
Lists are also assigned to a specific campaign as this is how our system knows which lists(s) to grab data from in order to make those outbound calls. A list can only be assigned to one specific campaign at any given time, however, a campaign can have multiple different lists assigned to a campaign.
Steps to Create your List
Step 1
Within your Admin Portal, click on Contacts > Data Lists
Step 2
Click on the "Add data list" button on the top right of the screen
Step 3
Give your new List an ID (can only container numbers), a Name, a Description, and the campaign the list will be assigned to (the campaign which will be used to call out on the data).
Click on the "Add" button to create the list.
Done.
Note: Lists have additional options that you can change and modify. Simply click on the "modify" icon to see the different settings. However, the majority of the time you will most likely NOT be changing any default settings. We recommend leaving the default settings if this is the first time you are creating a list.
Uploading your CSV File to a "List"
Next up we will be adding the data from our CSV file to the new list we just created. Before uploading your data there are a few important things to keep in mind when it comes to your data list:
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The file must be in a .csv (comma-separated value) format, UTF-8 or MS-DOS format preferred.
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It cannot be in an Excel format, such as .xls .xlsx
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You need to have at a minimum of two-column headers and one of those needs to be the phone number.
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The phone number must be 10 digits only. Do not include the country code. Eg. 9495551212
Prior to uploading your list, first perform a double check:
- Do you have the appropriate level of consent to place the call?
- Have you scrubbed your leads against the national Do Not Call Registry and/or local State Do Not Contact registries?
- Have you scrubbed your leads against the Reassigned Number Database?
- Have you scrubbed your leads against your internal Do Not Contact lists?
- Have you scrubbed your leads for false numbers, consecutive numbers, numbers assigned to medical devices, numbers assigned to emergency dispatch centers, and other critical numbers which should not be contacted?
Steps to Upload your data to your List
Step 1
Within your Admin Portal, click on Contacts > Contact upload
Step 2
Click on the Upload File tab and either "drag & drop" your file into the box or click on the box to open up your computer's file management system and select the .csv file to upload to the system.
Step 3
Monitor the progress of the file upload. Once it is complete click on the green blinking Process button.
Step 4
Next...
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select the List to upload the file to...
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select if you wish to check for duplicate phone numbers within your list or system... (recommended)
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select if you wish to scrub any numbers from your systems internal DNC list (recommended)
- New as of April 2023: Select whether or not to scrub your list against the Federal DNC
Step 5
We now will want to map the data in our CSV file to the appropriate fields within the contact center system. In this tutorial we won't be discussing custom fields. Instead we will be using the default fields.
Click here for a list of default fields used for mapping your list variables
There will be sections, the Ytel Fields and the File Columns section. Below each Ytel Fields section, we will be presented with a drop-down menu that will list all of the column headers we had on our CSV file.
We simply need to go through the Ytel Fields section and select the appropriate column header from our drop-down menu which has the data we are looking to upload to the system.
For example, in the screenshot below we selected the "phone_number" column to match the "Phone Number" Ytel field because this is the column in our CSV that has the phone numbers we wish to call.
We also matched the "Friendly_name" column from our CSV to the "First Name" Ytel field, because this is the column in our CSV file that has the customer's name.
You might have more items to match. Go ahead and complete the remaining matches you might have such as address, city, state, etc..
Once done click on the Submit and Process Data button.
Step 6
Within the same section Contacts > Contact Upload, navigate to the Contact Upload Queue tab to see your list is being processed. It will first show up under the "In Progress" section.
Once completed it will show up in the "Finished" section.
In Progress:
Finished:
Troubleshooting Steps and Best Practices.
- File Type- If you do not upload an accepted file type your leads will not load. The only file type you should use is CSV. We recommend UTF-8 or MS-DOS formatted. Note: You will see a red error banner if you attempt to load an unsupported file type.
- When loading in a file you need to have two or more headers in the file. Without two or more the file will not be accepted and no leads will be loaded. Ytel recommends "phone" and "first name" be used, at the minimum
- Example headers- phone, first name, address, or zipcode.
- You can have empty field’s after the initial 2 headers
- CSV errors- Sometimes when you load data it is missing in the fields after you load the data in.
- Fields should be text only, letters and numbers only.
- You may need to remove special characters in the field in order to remedy.
- You can also save the file as a CSV-MSDOS or UTF-8 to remove them as well. Example of special characters- ^&*;{}.