Adding Updating and Managing Multiple Advocates with a CSV Import

You can use the Import Advocates tool to manage multiple advocates in Influitive at a time. The tool works by importing a CSV spreadsheet into the system. Using a CSV import allows you to invite new advocates, assign new or existing advocates to groups, and to update new or existing advocates' Custom Profile Fields.

The following diagram outlines the workflow to follow when using the CSV import function, and their corresponding key points:

1. Export Customer Data from CRM or Other Database

The first step to recruiting advocates is to identify customers that have a high likelihood of engaging with you through your program. Your Onboarding Specialist or your CSM will help you build out your personas and give you some pointers on how to segment your unique audience for the purposes of your program.

Once you've identified the personas that you will be recruiting, ensure that the information you have about them in your CRM or database is current and relevant. Verify that you have their names and that their job titles and company information is up-to-date. Also ensure that you have email addresses for all the customers you want to import into Influitive, as you cannot invite advocates who don't have email addresses.

The thing to keep in mind is that when these advocates accept your invitation to join your program, they will see the profile data you have on them in their accounts, and in challenges that contain merge fields. As such, you would want their information to be accurate to provide them the richest and most personalized experience possible.

While Custom Profile Field values are not visible to advocates, this data should be up-to-date and accurate as well because you will be using this data to segment challenges and groups in the Influitive.

After you have confirmed your list of advocates to recruit and that their information is up-to-date, you should export their data into a comma-delimited CSV file. Please scroll through the file to make sure that it delimited correctly.

2. Clean Exported Data

Before you can import the file into the Influitive, you need to review your exported file and ensure that the data is clean. You can open the file in Excel and remove duplicate rows, remove rows that don't contain customer data (e.g. copyright in the footer), and remove any foreign characters that won't display in the Influitive correctly.

Cleaning your data is a critical step to avoid running into any failures at the time of import, so make sure to spend some time on this step.

3. Transfer Data to Influitive Template

Influitive can only accept CSV imports that follow the system headers provided on the template. Watch a video of the process and find the instructions below.

To get a copy of your template, from Admin View, click on the Advocates tab, click on the Actions button, and then select the Import Advocates (CSV) button.

4. Import CSV File into Influitive

When your file is ready to be imported, return to the Influitive and go back to the Advocates page, click on the Actions button and select Import Advocates to prompt the pop-up window again: 

1. Choose File: Click here to select the CSV file from your computer that should be imported.
2. Import Users As: Choose whether you want to add the users in the CSV file as a Nominee or Advocates. For more information regarding the difference between Nominees and Advocates, please see this article: Nominee Management
   
   1. Choose 'Advocates' in most cases for the normal invitation flow. The imported members will be taken to the invite list until they have joined the
   2. Choose 'Nominees' if you want to utilize the Hub Nominee workflow and limit their access to the Hub. Check in with your Influitive Support or CSM Representative before going down this route.
3. Send an invitation to advocates after import: If you're importing a brand new list of customers who are not yet in Influitive, checking this box will mean that invitation emails will be automatically sent out to them after the import job finishes running. If you are importing a list of existing advocates that has received an invitation before, then checking this box has no effect.
4. Add Imported Advocates to Group(s): Scroll and select the groups you want the list of advocates to be added to upon import.
5. Import: When you've confirmed all your settings, click the Import button. The dialogue window will close, but when you refresh the page, you will notice that the number of Advocates will increase accordingly.

When the CSV file finishes importing, you will receive an automated email from Influitive with a summary of your results and an attachment containing the data you just imported. This summary will include details on the number of advocates added and if there were any advocates from your CSV import list that are already in the hub:

If there were any errors on the import, they will be mentioned in the summary and explained on the attached file. Some common messages that are encountered are:

As mentioned in Section 4, when using the CSV importer tool, you have the ability to choose whether the hub should automatically send invitations to all the contacts immediately after they've been successfully added to the system. To make sure invite sending is automatic, simply check the box in the import dialogue as illustrated in Section 4. 

Invitations will be sent from the admin who is marked as the default sender in your hub and the invitation URL will be the one that will add the advocate to the appropriate group upon joining.

If you choose not to check this box during the import process, then you will have to manually select the individuals to send the invitations to them afterwards. 

After your CSV file is imported successfully, the contacts will be listed as advocates (unless you selected "Import as Nominees"). Either way, you can find the new not-joined members by selecting Invite List under the Members tab in the navigation menu.

Alternatively, you can access the Invite Contacts list through the Advocates tab, by clicking on the blue Actions button on the top-right hand side of the page and selecting Invite Contacts from the resulting dropdown menu:

This will take you to the Invite Contacts page, which lists all the contacts that you have added the system, but not yet invited as an advocate. 

Here's a run-through of what you'll find:

1. The "Click here to generate a group invite URL" link will open a pop-up that will list the available join codes for your respective groups

2. The Invite/Upgrade button will open a pop-up that will allow you to send an invitation to the selected contact(s)

3. The Source column identifies how this contact was added to the hub - sources can include: Admin Added, Open Signup, Salesforce, or Advocate Anywhere

4. The Archive button allows you to reduce the number of contacts found to keep the page clutter-free

5. The Status search feature finds any contacts that have been archived or are currently active

6. Upgrade Only allows you to transition a Nominee into an Advocate without sending them an email invite. This is useful if you are using Single Sign-On

After an invite is sent to a contact after import, that account converts into a Not Joined advocate account. When visiting a Not Joined advocate's profile page, you will see a blue "Not Joined" button:

Clicking the blue NOT JOINED button underneath the advocate's name will open a pop-up which will allow you to send that advocate another invitation: 

This pop-up shows you: 

1. When the invite was last sent
2. Options on how to re-invite the Not Joined advocate: It can be sent through the hub or the Resend invitation code myself option allows you to share the Invite URL with the member directly through a medium such as email.

Once any invited contact accepts an invitation to the hub and logs into their account, they are then considered a joined advocate. You can find all your joined advocates when you click on Advocates under the Members tab by default.

6. Contacts Join AdvocateHub As Advocates

The moment your contacts accept your invitation and join the hub as advocates, they will be added to the groups that you selected at the time when you were importing the CSV file. They will be able to see the challenges, rewards, Communities, and Experiences they now meet the targeting rules for. 

After a group of members has joined your hub, you can still use the CSV importer to update their profile information (see below table for what data the import will overwrite) by following the same procedure as outlined above. Remember that our system uses an advocate's email address as a unique identifier. Any changes you make in the profile data or Custom Profile Fields will be overwritten upon successful import, however, importing blank values does not overwrite or erase previously existing data. To erase previously imported data, you will need to do this manually by editing each individual advocate profile, or alternatively you can choose to import a character like an asterisk for all the values you want to overwrite. Also note that you cannot use a CSV import to remove advocates from a group en masse, and you will need to do this manually.