{"id":25062,"date":"2020-06-30T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T18:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nimble.com\/blog\/?p=25062"},"modified":"2025-07-07T08:52:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T15:52:48","slug":"contact-import-mistakes-to-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nimble.com\/blog\/contact-import-mistakes-to-avoid\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 6 Mistakes to Avoid when Importing Contacts into Your CRM"},"content":{"rendered":"

We try to make it virtually painless for our users to import their contacts from various different sources. Most people import their Outlook or Google Contacts, their LinkedIn Contacts, and either a CSV file of their prospect and customer\u2019s contact information; they can also use our <\/span>PieSync integration<\/span> to bring the data in from another CRM they might be transitioning from. <\/span><\/p>\n

This can already be a lot of contacts for an individual; if you are inviting other team members who also import their data from various sources, it\u2019s very likely that your database will become flooded with a lot of unnecessary data before you even start properly using it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Importing unnecessary contacts might bring you closer to reaching the basic contacts limit, which is 25,000 contacts. There are upgrades available, and you can purchase additional 10k contacts for an additional $10 per month. If you are trying to keep your costs<\/a> down, this is an important thing to consider.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This blog post will share the six common mistakes to avoid so you start your CRM journey on the right foot and avoid spending time and money on data cleanup in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistake #1 – Not Having a Plan<\/span><\/h2>\n

Before getting started, think about a few things:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Where are all the places from which you will be bringing contacts into Nimble from? Is there a way to clean the individual files up before importing them? What sources will you allow your teammates to import contacts from? Are you going to be using tags or custom fields to organize your data? Or will that be a combination of the two?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If so, do you already have an idea of how to name the tags and\/or custom fields? Who is going to be the admin of the account responsible for delegating permissions, training, and more? What permissions do you want to delegate to those on your team?<\/span><\/p>\n

With our recent update, you are also able to <\/span>create permission groups<\/span><\/a>; your sales team can have permission to do one action, while another team can have a different set of permissions (like the ability to add\/remove users, edit all contacts, bulk export or bulk delete contacts, manage billing\/plan changes\/add-ons, manage deal pipelines, and more).<\/span><\/p>\n

Creating permission groups and having a plan prior to import can save you trouble when, for instance, employees don\u2019t leave on the best of terms. It\u2019s good to take precautions and make sure that the business owner or only certain people in the company have the permissions to export the entire database and\/or delete it completely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistake #2 – Not Having a List of Contact Sources<\/b>
\n<\/span><\/h2>\n

Some of the contact sources can be Outlook Contacts, Google Contacts, LinkedIn connections, spreadsheets with your current customers\u2019 contact information, spreadsheets with prospect lists, blog subscriber lists, your current CRM database data, Twitter contacts, and more.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>It\u2019s always good to have a plan and when it comes to your CRM data import; following it can save you time and money in the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the biggest reasons why people stop using CRM is because of bad data. <\/b>CRMs now have a lot of fancy features, but most businesses use them for the basics: to store accurate contact information about their prospects and customers and to track the history of the interactions with them. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Before you start importing any contacts into Nimble, create a list of all the contact sources from which you absolutely have to import data from. Once you have the list, consider taking the time to go through them and clean them up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistake #3 – Importing without a Prior Cleanup<\/b>
\n<\/b><\/h2>\n

One example of cleaning up your contacts before the import would be to review your LinkedIn connections CSV file to make sure that you will only be bringing the people that are important to your business into Nimble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many people have had their LinkedIn accounts for years and may have accepted their former colleagues, college classmates, and even family members as their connections. Do these people really have to be in your team CRM account?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistake #4 – Not Having Contact Organization Strategy<\/b><\/h3>\n

As you start inviting other team members into your Nimble account, consider creating guidelines for them regarding contact import and organization. Are you going to allow everybody to import all their contacts?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If not, from which source(s) will you allow them to import? Do you want them to clean the lists prior to making sure that they are only importing important ones?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have a naming structure in place for creating tags? One thing you want to avoid is having a messy list of tags. If you invite three people into your organization and all of you import your Outlook contacts, it\u2019s very likely that each of them will name the import tag something different. Consider telling them to follow the same tag-naming structure, something along the lines of this:<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Outlook Contacts – Megan Caturday<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Outlook Contacts – M.C<\/span><\/p>\n

Outlook Contacts – Megan June 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

If you decide to utilize <\/span>custom fields<\/span><\/a> in Nimble, consider having a short meeting or designate somebody on your team to send out instructions on how custom fields are set up and how to use them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mistake #5 – Creating too Many Tags<\/b><\/h2>\n

Nimble gives you the option to organize contacts using tags, saved segments, and custom fields. Tags are definitely the easiest way to organize your contacts, but the downside is that you might end up with a lot of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you have hundreds of tags in your database, segmenting your database or even remembering what all of them mean can become very difficult. Consider using a combination of <\/span>tags, custom fields, and saved segments<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Feel free to watch this webinar in which we talk about how to use each of these, what the differences are, and how to set each of these up. You can skip all the way to 26 minutes into the webinar to only watch the part about tags, custom fields, and saved segments.<\/span><\/p>\n