Audience and Contacts
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      2. Audience and Contacts

      Importing Contacts in Bulk or Creating Them One at a Time

       

       

      Contacts are people whom you may have communicated with in the past and/or plan to communicate with in the future. You can create contacts in SlickText in a number of ways, which we’ll describe below. Once you’ve created contacts in SlickText, you can organize them into Lists. 

      SlickText provides a few basic fields, such as mobile number, name, address, and email address, but only mobile number is required. In addition to these basic fields, you can add as many custom fields as you need. 

      All contacts have opt-in statuses, such as subscribed or unsubscribed, which determines how you can message them. For more information about opt-in statuses, click here.


      In this article:

      Creating Contacts Manually One at a Time

      Importing Contacts in Bulk from an Existing List

      People Can Subscribe Themselves

      Creating Contacts Manually One at a Time

      You can create contacts in SlickText one by one. 

      1. Once you’ve logged into SlickText, click on Audience on the left navigation bar. 
      2. Click on Contacts.
      3. Click on the Create Contact button in the top right corner and select Create One.
      4. On the Create Contact screen, enter the contact’s information. Mobile number is the only mandatory field.
      5. Choose one or more Lists to add the contact to if you would like. If you need to create a new list, click on Lists on the left navigation bar and create your list before creating a new contact.
      6. Select Opt-In Status.
      7. Click Save. 

      Note: 

      In some cases, you may not have the ability to create or import contacts and will be presented with a notification. This is a safeguard within SlickText to help prevent spam.  Fill out the form to request access

      .

      Import Contacts in Bulk from an Existing List

      You can import an existing list of contacts.

      1. Once you’ve logged into SlickText, click on Audience on the left navigation bar.
      2. Click on Contacts.
      3. Click on the Create Contact button in the top right corner and select Import List.
      4. Upload your CSV file using drag and drop or by clicking on the box to browse for the file on your computer.
      5. If your file has a header row (column headers), select the toggle. This will be helpful when you are assigning the columns from the spreadsheet to their corresponding field in SlickText. 
      6. If you want to update existing contacts with new data from the CSV file, select the toggle. If you do not select this toggle, existing contacts on the CSV will be ignored and skipped. 
      7. Click Next.
      8. On the Assign Columns page, you will select which contact field you want each column on your spreadsheet to populate. 
        • If you selected that your file has a header row in step 5, the header rows will be used to automatically map the columns in your CSV to contact fields. If you would like to map the column to a different contact field than the one that was automatically selected, click on the box under Contact Field and choose a different contact field.
        • If you want to skip a contact field, choose None.
      9. Click Next.
      10. On the Opt-In Status page, select an Opt-In Status.  
        • You can choose an opt-in status for all contacts in the file you are importing.
        • You can assign different opt-in statuses for each contact by selecting Use the assigned opt-in status column. If you choose this option, you must have a column in your import file and designate it on the Assign Columns page.
      11. Click Next.
      12. Choose one or more Lists to add the contact to if you would like. If you need to create a new list, click on Lists on the left navigation bar and create your list before importing your CSV file. All imported contacts will be added to the List(s) you choose. 
      13. Click Next.
      14. The Review Details screen will confirm the number of contacts you will be importing. If everything looks good, click the checkbox to agree to the terms, then click Import Contacts.
      15. While the import happens, you can still use SlickText. SlickText will notify you when it’s complete. The notification will include the number of contacts that were successfully created.

      In order to make the data more useful after it is imported, SlickText enforces data formatting rules on some fields. These rules help ensure the accuracy and consistency of your data. Here are some of the basic fields and their formatting requirement:

      Field

      Format Requirement

      Phone

      Requires a valid phone number, including area code.
      Email Requires a valid email address format.

      Birthdate

      Requires day, month and year. SlickText will convert the format to mm/dd/yyyy.

      State

      Requires a 2 letter abbreviation for the state. For example, the Tennessee is TN. 

      Country

      Requires a 2 letter abbreviation for the country. For example, the United States is US. 
      Time Zone Requires the full name of the time zone, for example, "Eastern."

      Note: 

      Some of your contacts may not be successfully created during the import process. This will typically be a result of a data integrity error. If this happens, SlickText will notify you and provide a downloadable file describing the data import errors. Simply resolve those errors and try your import again.

      People Can Subscribe Themselves

      Use SlickText’s List Growth tools to gain new contacts. New contacts can be created by someone texting a keyword, scanning a QR code, filling out a webform, or clicking on a web popup. To explore SlickText’s list growth tools:

      1. Once logged into SlickText, click on Tools in the left navigation menu.
      2. Explore the List Growth tools.