An Announcement of Import

For the past three months, a select group of Delivra clients have been beta-testing a new import utility that was written by our Development team over the summer. We’re happy to announce today that the testing was successful, and that the beta period is officially over!

The new import tool has the same purpose as the old one–to allow you to upload a CSV file containing your email addresses and associated demographic information. However, there are new features that make the new utility superior to the importer that was included in Lyris ListManager, namely:

1) Import files can use any names in the header row, or contain no header row at all. It’s not necessary to include database column names in the CSV file, because the new importer lets you map the fields of your file to the right database column as well as specifying any fields that can be ignored:

2) Imports run in the background, allowing you to work on other tasks while your file is processed.  You can view the status of your import at any time:

And, receive an email when it is completed, with attachments showing any records that could not be imported:

3) For our clients who use subscription categories to manage list members’ preferences, it is now possible to import addresses directly into those categories from a CSV file, in addition to your use of categories in profile forms or API integrations.

The new CSV importer will be made available to all Delivra clients beginning in January 2010 (and the old importer will be retired sometime soon thereafter).   But we’re happy to enable it right now for any of our clients who would like a sneak preview.   Just send a request to support@delivra.com and indicate for which lists you’d like to turn on this new utility.  Once enabled, two new options will appear on the Add Members page:

Chris Broshears | Product Development