Introduction:
Hey everyone. I’m an employee at ActiveCampaign and wanted to share this guide. Import associations can be a little tricky so I thought it would be helpful to draft up a quick overview of the process as well as the steps involved. Thank you for reading and I hope it helps!
Please note: this guide is focused on the creation of contacts and accounts via import. If you already have data in your account that you’re looking to associate, please contact our Support teams.
Context:
Importing allows you to add a large number of contacts/accounts/deals to your ActiveCampaign portal in one go. Most platforms allow you to associate your contacts and accounts or contacts and deals when importing. So does ActiveCampaign.
To explain the process a little further, when contacts are imported, columns in your CSV file will be mapped to contact fields in ActiveCampaign. Each CSV file will have multiple rows and columns. Each row will relate to a specific contact and each column will relate to a specific field. All of the information on the same row will be the information that appears on the contact record in ActiveCampaign.
In the example below, you can see that the contact will have their first name, last name, organisation, phone number and other data on their record when the import is finished.
Since the contact CSV file will focus on contacts in ActiveCampaign, data can only be imported into contact fields. The only company field that can be included in a contact import file is the “Account” or “Organization” field as seen in the above example.
When this field is included in the CSV file and that file is imported, it will create contacts with the included information but it will only create the empty shell of a company and associate it to the relevant contact record. This is because there is no other company data in the import file.
In order to populate data for these newly created and associated companies, a second import is needed.
To import contacts and associate them with accounts, follow these steps:
1/ Create a CSV file of your contacts with all relevant information. (See here on how to save a spreadsheet as a CSV)
2/ Add a column titled “Account” or “Organization”. This will hold the account name and create an empty account in ActiveCampaign which will be associated with each contact. You can add data to these accounts in a later import.
3/ Follow the import instructions here. When mapping fields during the import, map your “Accounts”/ “Organization” column to the “Account (previously Organization)” field to create company records that will be associated with your contacts.
4/ After your contacts have been imported and they are associated with your accounts, you can import your account data.
Tip: It’s always helpful to create some test contacts and accounts to make sure you’re familiar with the import and association process before trying to import your actual database. You can always delete those contacts and accounts later or use them to test other features such as emails, automations, lead scoring and more.
