Setting Up and Sending an Email Campaign

Once you have a list of a least a few emails we can proceed to the next pre-step in sending an email campaign: Uploading your new contacts into your email program.

Whether you are recording your leads manually in an excel spreadsheet or adding them to a CRM, your list will probably look similar to the image below.

Before we can upload the contacts to the email service, we need to make sure we have our email list saved in the correct format, CSV.  CSV stands for Comma Separated Values and is a file format similar to an excel document except all the data (email, first name, etc) is scrunched into 1 “column”, and all extraneous formatting is removed. If you are using a CRM, there should be a “download contacts” button which usually will download in .csv or .xlsx (Excel) format. If the document is in excel format, you just need to “save as” and choose “CSV Comma Delimited (.csv)”.

Now its time to upload the contacts.

In this example using the email service SendInBlue, you can either drag your file onto the upload area or you can click on the image in the center and select your file from there. After selecting your file, you will see a screen asking you to confirm the chosen file is correct. If everything looks right, confirm the file.

Next, we need to map the columns in the file to the appropriate “attribute” in the email program.

For example, look at the image below. The EMAIL column is already being linked with the EMAIL contact attribute, however the LASTNAME and FIRSTNAME are not. If you click the contact attribute dropdown and then select LAST_NAME, you will link the LASTNAME column on your contact list with the LAST_NAME contact attribute.

Next, simply name your list and that’s it. You contacts are now in your email program.