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Importing Contacts in Bulk or Creating Them One at a Time

 

Contacts are the people you communicate with — past, present, or future — using SlickText. 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, see Viewing and Managing Contact Data.


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 a CSV file containing your contacts 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. If you select to update existing contacts, you can choose to update only existing fields or allow overwriting fields that currently contain data.
  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 contacts 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.

To keep your data accurate and consistent, SlickText enforces formatting rules on certain fields during import. The table below lists the basic fields and their requirements:

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, Tennessee is TN. 

Country

Requires a 2-letter ISO country code (e.g., US for the United States). 
Time Zone

Must be a valid IANA time zone identifier (e.g., America/New_York, America/Chicago, America/Denver, America/Los_Angeles)

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

SlickText’s List Growth tools let people subscribe themselves to your lists without any manual effort on your part. Contacts can opt in by texting a keyword, scanning a QR code, filling out a web form, or clicking a web popup. To explore these tools:

  1. Once logged into SlickText, click on Tools in the left navigation menu.
  2. Browse and configure the available List Growth tools (keywords, QR codes, web forms, and popups).