Imports
CSV Column Mapping for Clean Contact Imports
Most import problems start before deduplication. A spreadsheet can contain renamed headers, mixed encodings, quoted commas and numeric phone cells that have already lost their leading plus sign. Review the file structure before treating each row as a reliable contact.
AI-powered execution works best when targeting, messaging, and cadence are treated as one connected system.
Inspect headers and representative rows
Why it matters: Check the delimiter, character encoding and whether quoted multiline fields are present. Map company name separately from person name and job title. If the file contains several email columns, establish whether they represent alternatives for one person or different contacts. Never assume column order is stable across files from the same source.
- Preview rows with commas and non-English characters.
- Keep original headers for troubleshooting.
- Reject ambiguous mappings rather than silently guessing.
Normalize without inventing
Why it matters: Trim whitespace, normalize known country aliases and parse profile URLs consistently. Do not turn an unknown location into a default country or assume every phone is a mobile number. Preserve raw values for review when normalization fails. A clean-looking field is worse than an explicit rejection if its meaning has changed.
- Keep international phone numbers as text.
- Validate email structure before acceptance.
- Keep missing names blank rather than generating people.
Reconcile the import result
Why it matters: Compare total rows with accepted, duplicate and rejected counts. Download the rejected-row report and identify recurring problems before reimporting. A retry should resume or deduplicate safely rather than create a second audience. Finally preview personalization against real imported rows, especially those missing first names or company values.
- Keep a stable source-file identifier.
- Fix systemic errors at the source.
- Check that accepted plus rejected accounting is explained.
Final takeaway
Use this checklist when reviewing your next lead list or outreach campaign in Leads Lord.