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(Legacy) How to import members and referrals?
(Legacy) How to import members and referrals?

A guide for importing members and referrals into Referral Rock

Updated yesterday

This is an older article. See Importing Members and Referrals for more features.

Whether you have already built an existing referral network before you purchased Referral Rock or you gather new participants at an event, you can import new members and referrals from a CSV file into Referral Rock. You will use this same tool to update existing member or referral records with new information.


Importing Members

Members spread the word about your referral program and grow your referral network. Importing members is an easy way to automatically add individuals to your referral program en mass.

Import New Members

  1. From your admin dashboard, navigate to Actions > Bulk Import > Members.

  2. Choose the program you want to register your members to and click Next.

  3. Note the CSV guidelines listed and import your file.

  4. On the following pages of the import modal, you can preview your new member records and view any validation errors.

  5. Once you are happy with your import preview, click Import to add your new members.

  6. On the next screen you will see the status of your import.

Welcome Email

Please note: By default, importing new members will not trigger a Welcome email, but keep in mind any other automated emails that are currently enabled in your program will be sent out to members in the future. For example, the delayed Welcome reminder email, the referral status update emails, and the monthly summary emails.

If you would like the the Welcome email sent to new members during import please reach out to support using the chat feature in the corner and we can get that feature enabled on your account.

If your account already has the Welcome email feature enabled, you can toggle the Welcome email at the end of the import modal.

Update Existing Members

  1. From your admin dashboard, navigate to Actions > Bulk Import > Update Members.

  2. Note the CSV guidelines listed and import your file.

    1. For member update imports, you must include a memberkey field in order to identify which member(s) are being updated.

      1. You can use a member's internal ID "memberkey_id", external identifier "memberkey_externalid", referral code "memberkey_referralcode" or a member's Email Address "memberkey_email" to match the member.

  3. On the following pages of the import modal, you can preview your member records and view any validation errors.

  4. Once you are happy with your import preview, click Import to update your members.

  5. On the next screen you will see the status of your import.


Importing Referrals

The process for importing and updating referrals is nearly identical. Referrals are people that are connected to your referral program through a member. They must be associated with a member in order to be imported to your account. You can update a referral’s information by importing a CSV with the new and/or updated fields and the Referral ID.

Import New Referrals

  1. From your admin dashboard, navigate to Actions > Bulk Import > Referrals.

  2. Note the CSV guidelines listed and import your file.

    1. For referral imports, the referral must be associated with a member.

  3. Select the referral status that should be applied to all of the imported referrals

    1. You can also choose ‘Take from CSV File’ if you have multiple records with different status values.

  4. On the following pages of the import modal, you can preview your referral records and view any validation errors.

  5. Once you are happy with your import preview, click Import to add your new referrals.

  6. On the next screen you will see the status of your import.

Update Existing Referrals

  1. From your admin dashboard, navigate to Actions > Bulk Import > Referral Update.

  2. Note the CSV guidelines listed and import your file.

    1. For referral update imports, you must include a referralkey field in order to identify which referral(s) are being updated.

      1. You can use a referral's internal ID "referralkey_ID", external identifier "referralkey_externalid, or a referral's Email Address "referralkey_email" to match the referral.

  3. Select the referral status that should be applied to all of the updated referrals

    1. You can also choose ‘Take from CSV File’ if you have multiple records with different status values.

  4. On the following pages of the import modal, you can preview your referral records and view any validation errors.

  5. Once you are happy with your import preview, click Import to update your referrals.

  6. On the next screen you will see the status of your import.


CSV Guidelines

Note: Any unused columns or rows must be deleted, otherwise the import to fail

  • When creating your file to import, it must have a .csv extension.

  • Each line row represents a record.

  • All import files are limited to 10k rows per import.

  • Headline row should be at the very first row of the CSV file unless specified and must match the selected import type field columns.

    • Data beneath the headline row must must go in order matching the heading row.

    • Each row record should have the same number of fields as the header row record.

  • For member imports, the only required fields are email and firstname, though using the externalid field allows you to use any specific identifiers that may be tied to that member elsewhere, such as in your CRM.

    • Delete the Referral Code column if you want Referral Rock to create the referral code for new members. By default, Referral Rock will create referral codes using the member's first and last name.

  • For referral imports, the referral must be associated with a member.

    • The best way to do this is setting the memberreferralcode field with the referral code or the memberid from our system.

    • Next you can use a member's "email" to find a match memberexternalid. The referral will only be added if it finds one associating member.

  • If you want to add custom data, use the customtext1name (i.e., Favorite Food) and customtext1value (i.e., Ice Cream) fields.

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