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Tutorial: How to import a new list in Silverpop Engage Marketer
By Jimmy Jacobson
The basic Silverpop Engage work flow for creating a new list follows. If your CRM system integrates with Engage then you will never have to worry about this. I would highly recommend using Internet Explorer with the Engage web application. You will also need to enable pop ups because most of the dialogue options come from pop ups. Engage is a very JavaScript/Ajax intensive app and if you have errors, try using IE and enabling less security for the JavaScript to work.
Identify your target audience and data necessary to personalize marketing email to those individuals. The only required information is an email address, but you might chose to include data like registration date, full name, date of last purchase or activity on your website, last item purchased, etc. From your own database create an export process for this list. This makes your life easier because the update process for your Silverpop process can be automated. For convenience, make sure this file is in CSV format.
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Either upload the CSV file through your Silverpop FTP account (supports FTP, SFTP, and claims to support SCP though we had trouble with the SCP protocol. If you use SFTP or SCP then you will need to change to the /upload remote directory before copying. If you connect via FTP this folder is the default selected. We have our user list updated nightly and so have a script that pushes the updated file to Silverpop's server via SFTP. If you don't want to automate this or won't need to update the list, then just make sure it is accessible on your local hard drive for step 4.
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If you have uploaded the file to the FTP server then inside of Engage you need to go to the Resources Tab and on the drop down choose Stored Files. From there, choose "Import From FTP" and in the pop up window make sure to select the "Shared" tab instead of "Private". This will remove the file from the FTP and make it available within Engage for creating and updating lists. Strangely, you don't need to do this if you have automated a recurring update for a list, as the recurring update process looks on the FTP and not inside of the Stored Files for the update file. More on this later.
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Inside of Engage, go to the List menu and choose "Import" and then "New" from the drop down. Make sure to change the "Save In" to "shared". Silverpop has a private storage space for each user, and if you leave your list in Private, no one else with a login for your company will be able to access it. Choose where the file you want to upload is located, in your Stored Files or on your local hard drive. Then click Next.
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If Engage was able to find your uploaded file, you will see a preview of the first 3 lines or so of your upload file with the option to use the first row as column titles. Click Next.
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The next page in the wizard lets you change the names of columns, choose to ignore a column in your file and assign a data type for a column. There are a lot of options here, but the most important one is choose the type System for the column containing your email addresses and then in the New Field section choose Email from the new drop down that shows up. If you set any columns that contain date information to the Date data type you can use that column in queries and triggers as well. Click Next to finish the import of your new list and to schedule the job.
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Almost every action in Engage runs as a job and depending on the size of the file and the load on the system may take from seconds to a minutes. You can check the status of running or pending jobs by going to the Resources menu and choosing the Data Jobs item.
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