Uploading Your Contacts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Using The Template File
• Adding Your Contacts
  • Data Fields
  • Contact Fields
• Updating Your Customer Data
• Saving Your File
• Uploading Contacts To MeetPAT
• Data Processing
• Errors
  • Warning: Bad Rows
  • File Error

Uploading your contacts is the first step to getting started with MeetPAT.

Once you've logged in, click on "Upload Contacts" from your account home page. (1)

It's best to take advantage of the provided template in order to format your data correctly, so on the next page, scroll down to "Download template file" and click on the link to save the template. (1)

Using The Template File

Once you've downloaded and opened the template file, you'll see a spreadsheet with pre-populated column headers corresponding to the information that needs to be provided. 

Do NOT change the column headers.

The "FirstName" (1) and "MobilePhone" (2) fields are always required.  All other fields are optional, but the more information you can provide, the more accurate matching will be.

Columns (3) - (6) are for internal information that will help you segment your database more effectively by a range of criteria.

Please Note: It's essential that you follow the structure of the template, and do not change the order of the columns, remove a column, or change a column header. Once complete, the file must be saved as a .csv for upload.

Adding Your Contacts

Data cannot contain any special characters, and fields where no data exists must be left completely blank. (Don't use an asterisk (or anything else) to indicate a field that you don't have data for.)

FirstName data must contain proper names only. It cannot contain an initial, or a title (like Mr or Mrs).

Please take the time to go through your data and ensure it contains the correct information. Fields with incorrect information will affect your outcome, and result in fewer matches. (If you need help cleaning your data, contact us for assistance.)

Data Fields

There are a total of 9 fields that you can populate for uploading to MeetPAT.  The first 5 fields are used to match your customer information to the consumer database. Usually, the only required fields are "FirstName" and "MobilePhone."

The other 4 fields can be used to include your own data for the purposes of visualisation, or for segmenting your own data before filtering it.

These additional fields have been predefined as “Campaign,” “Source,” “Branch,” and “Other.”

Contact Fields

FirstName: Include the full First Name, do not include a middle name, an initial, or a title. (e.g. Mr or Dr.)

Surname: Surname / Last name only

MobilePhone: The following formats are valid: 27842345671, +27842345671, 0842345671, 841234567 or 084 123 4567. 

Email: If you have multiple email addresses, use the personal email address if you want to onboard your customers information to Facebook or Google, as the match rate will be higher. 

IDNumber: Supply the ID as numbers without any spaces. For the best match results use ID and “FirstName” on their own. (This is the only instance where MobilePhone is not required.)

Additional Fields

These additional fields allow you to add your own customer data to the report, create separate reports based on this data, and create custom audience segments which you can upload to the various platforms.

For example you might own multiple stores/branches and would like to analyse which customers are associated with each individual store. All you would need to do is add the store name when uploading your customer information. 

By default, we have labeled the additional fields as follows: 

Branch: This can be a branch or a physical store that a customer visits. 

Campaign: The marketing campaign that brought these customers to contact you. 

Source: Where did these customers originate from, e.g. Google & Facebook etc. 

Other: This can be used for anything else.

While we have named these fields "Branch," "Campaign," "Source" & "Other" many clients use these fields for other purposes. 

MeetPAT does not process the data in these fields in any way other than enumerating it, so you can add any data you like to these fields, as long as you keep note of what you used them for.

Column headers cannot be changed

For example, they could be used for any of the following:

• Products

• Brands

• Categories & Sub-Categories

• Sales Value (low, medium, high etc.)

• Avg Sale Value

• Leads vs Customers

• Lead Statuses

• Sales Person 

Updating Your Customer Data

If you are making use of the custom fields, you can update your existing Data Fields by re-uploading your customer list and replacing the content of those fields with new data. 

For example, if a customer purchased from another branch, and you want the report to reflect this, you can re-upload with different custom data in the row that contains the relevant customer information, (name and mobile number) and this will update the dashboard to include the additional fields. 

Saving Your File

In order to successfully upload your list, it needs to be saved as a CSV (comma delimited) file.

Please Note: CSV (UTF-8) formatted files will not work.

All spreadsheet software, (such as Excel, Google Sheets, Open Office, etc.) provides this as on option when saving files, either select either "CSV comma delimited," "Comma Separated Values (CSV)," "Text CSV (.csv)" etc. depending on your software.

Uploading Contacts To MeetPAT

Once you have saved your file, scroll to the bottom of the "Upload Contacts" page, and either drag your newly saved file into the box, or click "Browse" to navigate to the file location. (1)

Please note: File sizes are limited to 10Mb (approx 100,000 rows). If your file is larger than this, you will need to split it into two or more smaller files.

During the upload process, we will scan the file to ensure that the formatting matches our requirements. (If you have changed the format of the sheet, or you have saved incorrectly etc. you will get an error message.) 

A status indicator will show the progress of the scan.

Once the scan is completed, you will see "Check Complete" and a green tick-mark indicating that you can proceed to the next step.

You'll need to enter a descriptive name (2) for your file (for example, "Branch 1 Sales 2022") and click the "Submit" button to finish the process.

Data Processing

Once your data has been uploaded, the next stage of the process involves the retrieval of the additional information required to create the “Know Your Audience” Dashboard for this upload.

This can take some time depending on the size of your data file, and the current system load, but once the retrieval process is complete, we’ll notify you via email.

Please note that for the duration of the process, you will be unable to access the Dashboard. 

Errors

If the data in the CSV has key missing information or bad data, we will let you know with one of the following error messages:

Warning: Bad Rows

This error means that one or more of the rows in your data file has issues which prevent it from being processed.

The affected rows will be ignored, and the rest of the data will still be processed as normal.

File Error

If there is an issue with your uploaded file that prevents the system from processing it at all, you’ll see the following error message: 

You’ll need to change the formatting or structure of your file, and re-upload it.