The vast majority of EngagementHQ admins rely on their participants to register on a site of their own accord. However, there are plenty of good reasons why you might want to bulk import participants into EngagementHQ. This can be achieved via a CSV file import using our bulk importing tool.
Before you import any participants into your EngagementHQ platform, it's essential that you are aware of your privacy obligations and are careful not to add any participants to whom you are not entitled to.
The steps below describe how to import participants.
Select the Participants link in the navigation bar of EngagementHQ. Once there, click on the "Add Participants" dropdown on the top right side of the page and then select the "Import participants" option as shown below.-
The below page will open.
Read through the instructions and download the CSV template by clicking the Download CSV template button. Open the downloaded CSV template and you will see that it contains three columns; email, login, and password. You must populate the first two columns with a person's email address and the corresponding login name (aka 'screen name' or 'username'). In the password column, you can leave blank or fill in. There are two different outcomes, depending on your choice.
You nominate passwords - The participants will NOT receive a notification. Their account is instantly verified and active. Because of this, participants are not required to fill in the Signup Form.
You do NOT nominate passwords - The participants' accounts will remain inactive. After the upload, an automated email will be sent to the participant asking him/her to activate the account. To customize the email, please go to Site Settings > Messages & Notifications.
Note: To send a customized registration message to the imported users you should disable the toggle "Enable EngagementHQ to send beautiful HTML emails" on the page Site Settings. Please refer to this article for more details.
Fill in the template with the participants' details and save it on your desktop. Click on the button 'Import'. If everything is fine, you will see a message that the import was successful.
NOTE: In case there is an issue with the file, usually because an email or login has already been taken, you get an error message as shown below. Simply correct the error(s) in the CSV file and try uploading it again.
Imported participants will have Yes under the column "Imported".
You can repeat the import process as many times as you like. When you upload participants, they receive a notification email with a link that directs them to your registration form. Make sure that the registration form is set up properly (see here for more information on how to set up the registration form)
We recommend you limit the number of participants uploaded at any point in time to 500. While importing more will work, the time it might take to complete the upload can be substantial particularly on slower internet connections. It is safer to split big imports into various smaller files.
Below is a short checklist of things you should consider when bulk importing participants:
Only create accounts for email addresses for which you know the owner has given his/her consent.
Imported participants still have to fill in the registration form unless you imported their account with a password.
Testing with a colleague or your private email first, can help you understand the process an ‘imported’ participant goes through.
Consider doing the upload in stages. This will make it easier to react to feedback you might get after the upload has occurred. You need to associate a screen name with every email address.
Participants will be able to change that screen name later. You cannot create accounts for email addresses that are already in use on your site (either as a participant or an admin account).
Configure the automatically generated email that goes out after the import has occurred.
Ensure there are no spaces added in the beginning and at the end of the email address and login name.
Contact our support team if you need any further assistance via chat or email support@engagementhq.com