Import Contacts from a CSV file

If you’ve collected some leads already, you can also import them into your Typeform Contacts from a CSV file. 

This could be a great way to bring your lead data into Typeform if you’re a member of a marketing or sales team, and you’ve been using tools like Google Sheets, HubSpot or Salesforce to collect leads.

Importing Contacts is available on all Typeform plans. Enterprise customers can activate it by contacting their Customer Success Manager.

Before getting started:

1. Make sure to have your Contacts created in Typeform with the contact properties you want to import (for example, Name, Company, Location, Revenue etc.)
2. Go into the source tool you’re using (for example, Google Sheets), and export your customer data into a CSV file. If your data is stored in a different file format, convert it to CSV.
3. Update the column headers you’ve used in your Typeform Contacts. Columns with column headers that don’t match your Contacts properties will be ignored when importing from the CSV file.
4. Import the CSV file into your Typeform Contacts following the instructions below.

To import a contact list from a CSV file

1. Click Actions and select the Import from CSV option.

2. Now you’ll see a pop-up to import your contacts. Click Upload CSV file.

3. Once you’ve uploaded a CSV file, you’ll see the name of the file you’ve uploaded next to the Upload CSV file button. Click Import contacts.

4. You’ll receive an email from Typeform about the status of your contact updates. If no contacts have been added or updated, like in the example below, check the Import rules and logic section of this article to troubleshoot formatting issues with your CSV file.

Once you’ve successfully imported your contacts from a CSV file, you’ll see CSV import in the Last update source column next to contacts that have been imported from a CSV file.

Tip: Click to refresh your browser to see the most recent Contacts imported from a CSV file.

If the CSV file you’re importing doesn’t have a Subscription status column header, the Subscription status of Contacts imported from a CSV file will be Never subscribed, as seen in the screenshot below.

To populate the Subscription status property for CSV uploads, you can do the following:

• Create a Subscription status column in your CSV file.
• Manually enter the subscription status you want to assign to the Contact. The value can be the following:
  • subscribed,
  • unsubscribed,
  • never subscribed,
  • suppressed.
• The values must be added in all lower case for the subscription status of the Contact to be updated when importing from the CSV file.

Import rules and logic

• If the CSV file doesn’t have a column header named Email, no contacts will be added or updated.
• For each row, a new contact will be created if the email address does not already exist in contacts. Otherwise, if there is a matching email address with some additional information, it’ll be added to that Contact. For example, if you have an email address in the 4th row with new location information, and the same email address in the 5th row with new company information, both will be added to the same Contact profile.
• If multiple rows have the same email address, the data will be combined into one Contact profile, preferring later rows. In this case, earlier rows will be overwritten by later ones. For example, if the same email address has Utah as their location in row 5, but Colorado as their location in row 200, then their Contact profile will be updated to Colorado.
• If a column header corresponds to a property name, the data from that row will be added to the contact.
• If a column header does not correspond to a property name, the data in that column will be ignored.
• Blank values in the CSV file do not overwrite contact properties. An exception to this is the Subscription status property, which will default to Never subscribed when the corresponding field is left blank in the CSV file.
• In the CSV file, the separators used must be , instead of ;. If ; are used as separators, the whole header row will be considered one column header, and no contact information will be added or updated.