Contact list file (CSV): format and upload

Upload a normal contact export from any tool, such as a CRM, a webinar platform or ZoomInfo, and PPCmate turns it into an audience. We read only the e-mail column, hash each address with SHA-256 as it arrives, and skip every other column unread.

File format

• CSV with a header row, up to 50 MB.
• Separators: comma ,, semicolon ; or tab.
• Quoted cells (including line breaks inside quotes) and a UTF-8 BOM are fine.
• One column must hold e-mail addresses. We find it by its header (for example email or E-mail), or you pick it.
• Plain e-mails are hashed for you. Already-hashed SHA-256 values are accepted too.
• Other columns (names, phone numbers, companies) are ignored and never stored.

Example:

email,first_name,company
anna@example.com,Anna,Example Ltd
ben@example.org,Ben,Example Org

Upload it

1. Go to Audiences → Connect Audience Data and click Upload e-mails on the Any file tile.
2. Click or drag the CSV into the box.
3. Check the Audience name, and the E-mail column if we couldn't guess it.
4. Tick "These are my company's own contacts and I may use them for advertising. Disconnecting deletes everything copied." and click Connect.

You'll see how many e-mails were added and how many rows were skipped. The audience then shows on the Audiences page, ready to pick in a campaign's Customer Lists section.

Updating the list

A file doesn't update by itself. Open the connection and use Upload a new file to replace the list. The new file replaces the old list completely. For automatic daily updates, connect your CRM instead: Connect HubSpot: sync a HubSpot contact list to your audiences, Connect Apollo.io: sync a saved Apollo contact list or Connect Dealfront: sync a Dealfront contact list.

Troubleshooting

• "File is over 50 MB": split the file or remove columns you don't need.
• "The file was not accepted": make sure it's a CSV (not .xlsx) and has a header row with an e-mail column.
• Many rows skipped: skipped rows had an empty or invalid e-mail address.
• "Preparing…": the audience is being set up. This takes a few minutes, and there's nothing to do.
• "Connected · too small": Google, Microsoft and Meta need at least 300 people.
• "Waiting for a file": the connection exists but no file has been uploaded yet.

To delete the list, see Disconnecting a data source: what gets deleted.