How To Upload Contacts and Automatically Generate Their Referral Links 🔗

Easily add users to your referral program by uploading your contact database. This allows you to automate the process of assigning each user their own unique referral link and getting them involved in your campaign.

In this guide 👇

1. Why Should You Add Users by Uploading Your Contacts?

2. Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Prepare your CSV File

Upload your Contacts into Referral Factory

3. Troubleshooting

❓ Field Mapping Error

❓Incorrectly Formatted CSV File

4. Further Resources

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1. Why Should You Add Users by Uploading Your Contacts?

With Referral Factory, there are multiple ways to issue people with referral links to get them referring.

The most simple way is to share your campaign join link, where anyone can sign up to join your referral program and get their own unique referral link. However, if you already have the contact information for potential referrers, you can automatically enroll them in your referral program so they can immediately start sharing their referral link and spreading the word 🚀 

There are many ways to automatically add users to your campaign, including via a CRM integration, Zapier, Webhooks, or API. The easiest way, by far, is to simply upload a list of your contacts! 

Want to learn more about these different options? You'll find more details here: 📖 6 Ways To Automatically Add Your Contacts To A Referral Program and Generate Their Referral Links 🔗 📖

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2. Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Prepare your CSV File

→ Create a CSV file with your contact data or simply copy your data into this template. 

A CSV file is a type of file format that stores data in a table-like structure, similar to a spreadsheet or database. It is a simple and widely used format that can be created using programs like Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or Numbers. 

Here is a very basic idea of how the table might look: 

Our software requires that you upload the "First Name" and "Email" for each contact you'd like to add to your campaign. You can upload additional details, like "Last Name" or "Company Name," if you have added the accompanying form fields in the pages for the person referring. Add an additional column for each additional field. 

Need some additional help with exporting your CSV file? This 📖 WikiHow article 📖 teaches you how to create CSV files using Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, Google Sheets, and a text editor.

Upload your Contacts into Referral Factory

→ From your Referral Factory dashboard, navigate to the Users tab. 

→ In the top right-hand corner, click Add Users.

→ Select Upload Users (CSV File).

→ Choose the Campaign that you'd like to add your contacts to.

→ Click Import.

→ Click Browse. 

→ Select your CSV file from your computer and click Open. 

→ Click Next.

→ If you have a header row in your CSV file, select the option to ignore the first row.

→ If there is a possibility that some of the contacts in your file are already enrolled as users in Referral Factory, they will be skipped by default. If you'd prefer to overwrite these users (thereby creating new referral links for them) select the option to overwrite.

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→ To match the data in your CSV file with the correct fields in Referral Factory, map the corresponding data field from the dropdown list above each column in the preview. 

→ Click Next.

→ Check that the number of users matches the number of contacts you want to upload. If this number seems incorrect, please check the troubleshooting section 👇

→ Click Confirm and Save. 

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3. Troubleshooting

 ❓Field Mapping Error

Problem:

At least one of the required fields ("First Name" and "Email") is missing.

Solution:

Check that you have correctly mapped the "First Name" and "Email Fields". 

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❓Incorrectly Formatted CSV File

Problem:

After uploading your CSV file, the data isn't showing in the columns correctly. 

Solution:

Check that your CSV file is correctly formatted. An easy way to do this is to open the file in a Text Editor and check that all data values are separated by a comma (,) and not a semi-colon (;). 

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4. Further Resources

Want to learn more about referral links? You might find this useful 👇

📣 How To Create a Referral Link: A Step-by-Step Guide 📣