One of the most common ways to create new All Contacts segments (and its predecessor Marketing Lists) is to import data from a CRM. Before doing this, make sure your Act-On account is integrated with your CRM.
This article describes generic steps. See specific guides for Salesforce, MS Dynamics, NetSuite, SugarCRM, and Infor.
Import CRM Data to All Contacts
Import CRM Data to Marketing Lists
Import CRM List
Once the CRM connector is set up for your Act-On account, you can import your CRM lists.
- Go to Lists > Marketing Lists.
- At the top right, click Import.
- On the Import New List page, select the list you want to import.
- Optionally, you can edit the suggested name for the new Act-On list to be created.
- Click Next.
- If selecting your All CRM Leads/Contacts list(s), you will be asked to choose which lead/contact fields you want to import.
- Click Finish.
Sync the List
Upon importing from your CRM, you can synchronize the list between your CRM and Act-On:
- To the right of the CRM list, click the green down arrow.
- Click Import/Export and select your CRM Sync Setup.
- Enable/disable the Push/Pull and Add/Update features.
- Click Select Push-Update/Pull-Update Fields to identify the CRM fields that Act-On can update.
- Click Add List Columns if there are other CRM fields you wish to import.
- Click Schedule to specify the frequency of the synchronization.
- Click Save.
Notes
- You can import the same CRM list multiple times, creating as many different Act-On lists as you need; but all of them are associated with the same source CRM list.
- Data from any of those associated Act-On lists will be pushed to the "original" CRM list.
- The association between the Act-On list and the CRM list from which it was first imported lasts until the Act-On list is deleted.
- Act-On doesn't make a distinction between contacts and leads imported from your CRM (except to remember which CRM lists they came from, so they can be pushed back, later).
- In Salesforce, each lead has a value in the Company field. When a Salesforce lead is imported, Act-On uses that value to populate the Company field in your Act-On list.
- In Salesforce, each contact may or may not be associated with an account. When a Salesforce contact is imported, Act-On uses the value of its Account field to populate the Company field in your Act-On list.
- This helps you avoid personalization errors if you use the Company field in your messages.
- If you change the value of the Company field in your Act-On list, pushing the data back to your Salesforce account doesn't affect the Account field in the Contacts list there.
- A list created from the saved results of a Salesforce report cannot be pushed back to Salesforce. You can re-import the results (typically because they've changed in Salesforce); when you do, you'll have two options for handling new and existing records.
- When importing Salesforce reports (in Formatted Report view in Lightning or Printable View in Classic), Salesforce truncates Long Text Area and Rich Text Area fields, to 255 characters. More information from Salesforce is here.