Uploading recipient lists from Excel or CSV

One skill, three channels

All three outreach channels accept uploaded lists, each with a slightly different flavor:

• Email Studio → Upload List: an Excel file with an "Email" column.
• SMS Center → Excel/CSV recipients tab (requires the Open SMS Recipients approval — see Texting beyond your team roster).
• Robocalls → Upload Excel in the Recipients step.

For SMS and voice, files can be .xlsx, .xls, or .csv, up to 50 MB and 20,000 rows; larger lists should be split and sent in batches. Hebrew and other non-Latin text in CSV files is handled correctly.

Preparing your file

A well-formed file has:

1. A header row — the first row names each column ("Phone", "Email", "First Name"…).
2. One person per row below it.
3. A clearly named contact column. The uploader auto-detects common headers: for phones it recognizes names like "Phone", "Mobile", "Cell", or "Telephone"; for email it looks for "Email" or "Email Address"; a "Name" column is picked up too.
4. Country codes on phone numbers where possible (like +1 or +972). Numbers without a prefix are interpreted using the Default Region you select, so a list mixing countries should include explicit prefixes.

What happens on upload

Email: you immediately see a summary card — Valid Emails and Skipped counts. Malformed addresses are dropped before sending, and duplicates send only once.

SMS: the uploader does a full smart analysis and always shows a confirmation popup before anything is accepted. It shows which column it believes holds the phone number, which holds the name, and sample rows — you confirm (or correct) the mapping, so the system never guesses silently.

Robocalls: a preview card shows rows detected, non-empty phone numbers, and which column was auto-detected (if no phone header is found, the first column is used — check the preview!). Exact valid/invalid counts appear after launch, once server-side validation and Do Not Call screening finish.

Your columns become personalization variables

Here's the powerful part: for email and SMS uploads, every extra column becomes an insertable variable. Upload a file with columns "Email", "First Name", and "Synagogue", and the composer offers matching variables — so one blast can read "Hi Sarah, greetings to everyone at Beth Israel…" for every row, automatically. In the SMS composer, uploaded-file variables appear as highlighted chips below the message box.

Tip: Name your columns the way you'd like to reference them. Short, simple headers ("First Name", "City", "Amount") make the cleanest variables.

Common upload errors

• "No Email column found" — rename your address column header to "Email".
• "File appears to be empty" / "No data rows found" — the file has a header but no rows, or data starts on the wrong sheet (only the first sheet is read).
• Row limit exceeded — split files over 20,000 rows into batches.
• High skipped count — check for merged cells, addresses split across columns, or stray spaces.

Related articles

• Sending an email blast
• Texting beyond your team roster
• Sending a voice broadcast (robocall)