You can either follow the steps below or scroll to the bottom of this page to watch a recorded video walkthrough. (Click here to go straight to the video)
When you need to update many contact records at once, VipeCloud’s import tool allows you to re-import a CSV that matches existing contacts using unique identifiers. This saves time, prevents duplicates, and eliminates the need to delete and re-upload data.
Before continuing, make sure you're familiar with the basics of importing contacts. If not, start with this article: How to Import Contacts + Create Custom Fields
1. When to Use a Re-Import
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Re-importing is ideal when:
You have new or corrected data from another system
You want to update fields like tags, statuses, or custom values
You made a mistake during your first import and want to fix it without deleting contacts
Excel would be a preferable tool for managing and updating large amounts of contact data
2. Understand Unique Identifiers
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VipeCloud uses unique identifiers to match records during an import. The most common are:
Email address (default)
Mobile phone number
Any field you’ve marked as a unique identifier
If no match is found, a new contact will be created. If the identifier doesn't exactly match an existing contact, you risk creating duplicates.
3. Prepare Your CSV File
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Include the unique identifier column (e.g., email)
Only include the columns you want to update
Do not include unnecessary columns — they won’t be updated and could clutter the import
Blank cells will overwrite existing data with blanks (e.g., clearing a field)
If you're importing dropdown or picklist values, be sure your CSV values match the allowed field options exactly.
4. Import the File
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Go to the Contacts page
Click Import
(Optional) Import as a contact list to easily track the updated segment. Otherwise import as "Contacts"
Upload your CSV file
Match each column header to the correct contact field
Complete the import
Once complete, VipeCloud will update the existing records where a match is found and leave unmatched rows alone (or create new contacts, depending on the data).
5. Best Practices
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Start with a small test import to verify results
Always double-check column mapping before processing
Back up your data or export the current contact list if you're updating many fields
Use segments or contact lists to keep track of what’s been updated
Always double check your import for accuracy before sending any mass communication
📺 Watch the Video
Here’s the full training if you’d prefer to watch the demonstration:
Transcript
Transcript
00:00:00
Drew Ross: Hello everybody. My name is Drew and today we're going to talk about how you can use the importing tool to mass update contacts that are already existing in your CRM. Uh, and so the reasons why you might want to do this is because it can save you from lots of manual entry. Um, and it also some sometimes people might think that you need to uh in order to like maybe correct an upload, you need to first delete the contacts completely and then completely reupload them. Well, our system using unique identifiers can actually match contacts when you are importing them uh to contacts that are already existing in the system and just simply look to see is there any new data here and then update that all accordingly. So, this can be used to correct an import that might not have gone to plan or it can also just be a handy way to quickly update tons of contacts based on any kind of new data that you might have uh all without manual entry. So, it's a really really useful tool.
00:01:53
Drew Ross: Um, now this video here is going to assume that you have a baseline understanding of how to import contacts using a CSV. So, we're not going to be covering any of the sort of importing 101 sorts of topics here. We already have a video that covers that. Um, so you can simply search the help center for that. or if you're watching this video in our help center, you can uh we'll be sure to include a link to that article uh in the help article that you might be watching this video from. So, um let's uh let's let's cover some of the basics here. And so, uh we've already covered why you might want to do this. Now I mentioned quickly there unique identifiers and that is a key concept to uh to doing this. A unique identifier is a field that uh helps our system understand that a one contact is distinct from another one. So an example I like let's say you've got four Bob Smiths in your system. Now, the names are all the same, but these are unique individuals, and you're going to have some kind of information that you can use to distinguish all of them, such as an email address.
00:03:17
Drew Ross: That's the unique identifier. Uh, that's like the default unique identifier in our system. Also, mobile phone numbers are a really common unique identifier as well. Plus, you can set a unique identifier to some other uh other, you know, contact field as well. Uh if you like any of your custom fields could be set to the set to that. Now, um email being the most common one. So, you're going to want to make sure that when you are doing this that there's going to be a unique identifier for every contact that you're looking to update because if there is not a match, a new contact is simply going to be created. Uh now that might be a welcome addition if there isn't already an existing uh contact in our system for that individual. But if there's maybe a mismatch, which can happen like especially with emails if somebody changes jobs, um that is just something you're going to need to be mindful of um and look for ways to clean your data uh accordingly when you are uh when you're taking care of this process.
00:04:29
Drew Ross: So, I'm going to first show you here how you can prepare your CSV for doing a mass update like this. Um, now in most cases, you're going to want to uh get a CSV that is you're going to want to make it as basic as possible. And the reason you're going to want to and and by that I mean uh as few columns uh as are needed because let's say for these contacts we have here that we're going to be updating you know we have a whole bunch of other information about them. Their addresses their phone numbers the companies that they're with um all which are not represented in this CSV that we're working with. Um, now the uh the reason that that you might not want to include all that information there is because this is information that's not going to be relevant for our import today. We're going to be just really updating these D and E fields here. In fact, we don't even need the A and B fields because when you are doing an import like this, the system is not going to update or pay any regard to the uh to the columns that are not included on this import.
00:05:51
Drew Ross: What it's going to be looking for is the unique identifier, which is uh this email column. And then it's just going to look at hey what else information do we have included in this import is if this information is new it's going to update it accordingly. Now something that's going to also happen here too is um if you have information that is like if you have a a blank field what that's going to do is it's going to update that field to a blank value. So you'll want to be mindful of that. So, um, these are the contacts in the CRM and these are the contacts in this CSV and we're going to update them to to new values, levels of interest. Now, this is, you know, kind of um importing 101 stuff here, but you'll want to know that if it's going to be a a field that has defined values like a drop down or pick list, you want to make sure that this new information uh that the that the custom fields have a corresponding value in their uh in their set values.
00:07:15
Drew Ross: So, we have our CSV ready to go. As you can see, the information in the CRM is different than what is in the CSV. Going to hit import. And uh one thing too that you might want to keep in mind when you're when you're doing these imports is a uh if you're going to want to really have it be easy to just basically have a segment of the contacts set aside that have been updated. You could import it as a contact list. That would be a recommendation. In this case, we don't really uh this is a small amount of information. So, we're just going to do uh a regular contacts import. And I am looking at my file, dragging it over. Going to make sure that everything matches the headers to the fields. Process the import. And we're just going to go over to our contacts. And here we go. We have successfully updated all of these fields. Contact type to MQL, level of interest to 8. It has been a successful mission.
00:08:39
Drew Ross: Um, and so it's always good to do what I'm doing right here, checking the work, making sure that everything has uh successfully been updated. And that is about it. Now, I do want to to mention um whenever you're doing something like this, especially if it's going to be a slightly more involved import uh and especially if it's going to be a larger, you know, you're looking to update a larger amount of data, start small. Uh it's always easiest to uh to import uh just a row or two. Look for contacts that are the most likely ones to be troublesome that have uh maybe the most uh you know uh drop downs of pick list or any number of things like that. Uh start small, make sure that that's that small import is successful and then you can move forward uh from there. And um yeah and then also like I said using a contact list uh import as contact list can also make it really easy to be able to uh see that segment that you have imported. Um and and yeah uh also of course feel free to uh to reach out to us as well if you have any questions about doing something like this.