When starting with InTouch Follow-Up, clubs often have existing leads or members in a separate database. One of the additional options in your agreement is for InTouch Follow-Up to import a file of these records into your site(s).
Benefits of an Import
The benefit of a lead import is easy - less data entry for you! An import also allows for lead creation dates to be backdated so that the lead falls into the appropriate follow-up schedule. For example, a 2-week old lead will show as a 2-week old lead instead of a 1 day old lead if you were to enter it manually. The benefit of a member import is having the ability to assign Member Retention follow-up, to send an email to all members, and for our referral feature of linking an existing member to a new lead.
Club Responsibilities BEFORE sending a CSV file for import
IMPORTS CANNOT BE REVERSED!
It is the responsibility of the club to make sure your files meet the guidelines below. Import files that are not sent properly often cannot be reversed once imported. If reversal is an option, it is still often messy and undesirable... and costs the club an additional fee for development work to remove leads/members.
Check your files for duplicates.
InTouch Follow-Up does not scrub data, check for duplicate records in a file, or compare lead records to member records. It is the club's responsibility to send data as they want it to be imported.
Make sure your data meets all requirements.
A record with neither a phone number or email address cannot be imported. It is the club's responsibility to sort the file and add any "filler data" desired to ensure those records are imported.
A record missing a Lead Created Date (for Leads) or Join Date (for Members) cannot be imported
Make sure you include a Lead Owner or Member Owner
If this column is blank, records will be imported as Unassigned
Unassigned Leads and Unassigned Members are not sent emails nor scheduled on anyone's Agenda for calls
Unassigned Leads can be transferred in bulk under Admin>Transfer
Member Records CANNOT be transferred in bulk
Keep a copy of your file
If requested, InTouch can provide a summary of imported records to include the number of leads or members imported. You can use this number to compare to your actual file numbers to the number imported.
Member Import Information
The following are rare issues for clubs, but it is still important to know as it could effect yours. InTouch Follow-Up has a concept of Sales and Members, which you see in Sales Referral Follow-Up vs Member Retention Follow-Up. Members can be imported, Sales cannot. This means:
You can assign Member Retention Follow-Up for an imported member, but you cannot assign Sales Referral Follow-Up.
Members will not show up in export reports. InTouch Follow-Up (designed to track and drive sales) does not have reports or exports of members