Skip to main content
Bring an existing audience into Brudcast from a CSV, and take your contacts back out again whenever you need them. On the way in, you map your file’s columns and review the counts before anything is written.
Before you start: you need a CSV file of up to 10 MB with an email address on every row, and permission to contact everyone in it. New contacts count toward your plan’s contact limit.Names and phone numbers don’t come in this way. A dashboard import doesn’t save the First Name, Last Name or Phone Number columns, even though the mapping step lets you pick them, and custom field values can’t be imported at all. If your file’s names matter, import through the API instead, which saves first and last names mapped to first_name and last_name. Otherwise, plan to add names and phone numbers to the contacts afterwards.

​
Prepare your file

  • Save it as a comma-separated .csv file in UTF-8.
  • Put the column names in the first row, and one contact on each row after that.
  • Give every row an email address. Rows without a valid one are skipped.
  • Wrap a value that contains a comma in double quotes: "Acme, Inc.".
  • Keep each contact on one line. Line breaks inside a cell aren’t supported.
  • To give a contact several tags, separate them with semicolons: vip;early-adopter.
For a template, select Download the sample CSV on the Import tab. It has the columns Brudcast reads and two example rows.

​
Columns that are imported

​
Import your file

1

Upload the file

Go to Contacts > Import & Export and stay on the Import tab. Drop your file on Upload a CSV, or click it to browse. The Import Contacts dialog opens on the Map Columns step once the file has uploaded.
2

Map your columns

Each row of the dialog pairs a Column in your file with a Brudcast field. Common column names like “Email address” or “Tags” are matched for you. Change any pairing, or choose Skip this column to leave a column out. At least one column must be mapped, and one of them should be Email. First Name, Last Name and Phone Number are offered here, but a dashboard import doesn’t save them.Below the columns, two switches decide how the import behaves. Both are on by default:Select Continue.
3

Review the counts

The Review step checks the whole file without importing anything and shows how many rows will be New contacts will be created, how many match contacts you already have, and how many Rows will be skipped due to errors.If the new contacts wouldn’t fit in your plan’s remaining contact allowance, a warning says so here, before you start.
4

Add a list and tags (optional)

Turn on Save your upload as a list and enter a List name to put everyone in the file into a new list. Under Add tags, pick or create tags to apply to every imported contact.
5

Confirm consent and import

Tick I have obtained explicit consent for communication from all contacts in this upload. Import stays unavailable until you do. Then select Import.

​
How duplicates are handled

A row is a duplicate when its email address matches a contact you already have. A repeat of an address that appears earlier in the same file is also a duplicate, and isn’t imported twice. Through the API you can also choose create_new, which creates a new contact for every row even when the address already exists.

​
Partial uploads

With Allow partial upload on, rows with a missing or invalid email address are skipped and listed in the error report. Everything else is imported. With it off, the import is all or nothing. If any row is invalid, or the new contacts wouldn’t fit in your contact limit, nothing is imported and the import is marked Failed.

​
What happens next

The import runs in the background. Import history shows its progress while it runs, then its totals: When the import finishes, the notification bell shows Contact import complete or Contact import failed, with a View import link back to this page. A file you upload but never import is deleted after 24 hours.

​
Download the error report

On a completed import with errors, select Errors on its row. You get a CSV with three columns: Fix the rows, save them as a new CSV, and import that file.

​
Large imports on a new account

Importing 5,000 or more contacts in your organization’s first 24 hours holds your sending for a manual review. The contacts are still imported; what’s held is sending to them. See Deliverability overview.
Buying or scraping lists is the most common source of spam complaints, so a large list arriving before an account has any sending history gets a human look first.

​
Troubleshooting

Why: only .csv files of up to 10 MB are accepted. Fix: export your spreadsheet as CSV. If it’s larger than 10 MB, split it into several files and import each one.
Why: you haven’t confirmed consent. Fix: tick I have obtained explicit consent for communication from all contacts in this upload. If you saved the upload as a list, you also need a List name.
Why: no column is mapped to Email, so every row looks like it has no address. Fix: go Back to Map Columns and set your email column to Email.
Why: dashboard imports don’t save the First Name and Last Name columns. Fix: edit the contacts after importing, or import through the API with the columns mapped to first_name and last_name.

​
Export contacts

Export your contacts to back them up, move them to another tool, or work on them in a spreadsheet. The file is built in the background, and you download it from your export history.
1

Choose who to export

Go to Contacts > Import & Export and open the Export tab. Under New export, pick All contacts, Active contacts, One list or One segment. For a list or a segment, you choose which one next.
2

Pick the columns

In the Export Contacts dialog, tick the Columns you want: First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone Number, Timezone, Language, Tags and Notes. The Email column holds each contact’s primary email address.
3

Start it and download it

Check the File preview, then select Start Export. The export appears under Export history as Processing; when it reads Completed, select the download icon on its row. A Failed export has to be started again.
Exports are always CSV files. The first row holds the column names as field keys: firstName, lastName, email, phoneNumber, timezone, language, tags, notes. There’s one row per contact, and empty values are left blank.
The Phone Number and Tags columns are exported empty. To get phone numbers or tags in bulk, read contacts through the API instead.
Each download link is fresh and short-lived, so selecting the download icon again opens a new one. An export’s Description, such as List: Newsletter, is fixed when it starts, so it keeps the list or segment name even if you rename it later.

Lists

The list your upload can be saved as.

Deliverability overview

What holds a large first send, and for how long.

Migrate from another provider

Bring contacts, lists and suppressions across in one run.

Segments

Build the group you want to export.