If you already have lead contacts, one of your first steps in Friendly Automate will be to import those contacts. In this tutorial, you'll learn:

• [ ] how to prepare your contact list for the import
• [ ] how to prepare Friendly Automate for the import
• [ ] and how to perform the contact import

<aside> 📹 Do you prefer a video tutorial? Then follow this link:

Import your contacts in a smart way (video)

Or continue on this page for the text tutorial.

</aside>

Prepare the contact list for import

Basically, you can import your contact list as it is, for example from Excel. However, some fields must have certain formats for Friendly Automate to recognize them correctly. The problematic fields are marked in red in the table below:

• time zone: Must be in [Continent]/[City] format and in English, for example "Europe/Zurich" for Switzerland. The format "GMT+1" does not work.

• country: Must be in English, for example "Germany".

• preferred language: Must be specified as an abbreviation of two lowercase letters, for example "de" for German. It is possible to specify a local idiom here, for example "de_CH" for the Swiss German idiom. However, this is not recommended for practical reasons.

  <aside> 💡 Why? For example, you later send a newsletter in two language versions, say in German (de) and English (en), and set English as the default. A person who has "de_CH" as language preference will then automatically receive the English newsletter, since the newsletter does not exist in the preferred language variant.

  </aside>

• date and time: Must be specified in the format "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss".

  <aside> 💡 If your dates have a different format, you can automatically convert the whole column in Excel by selecting "Custom" for the cell format and then entering "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss".

  </aside>

  

• boolean (yes / no): Each field that is based on a yes-or-no question can only be filled with the values "1" or "0".

• multi select: Every field that allows multiple selections from different options must have the options separated by a vertical bar (without spaces!).

  <aside> 💡 This is an example of a custom field. In the next chapter you will learn how to set them up in Friendly Automate before importing.

  </aside>

Check these data and adjust them before proceeding.

Finally, save your contact list in CSV format.