How to Import Contacts into Velveteen

How do I stage contacts for import?

1. 1

   Open Email imports

   Go to Dashboard, Email administration, Imports. This page requires administrator access.
2. 2

   Choose the active brand and describe the source

   Select a Brand, enter a Source name, choose a Source type, and provide an Evidence summary. The available source types are CRM export, Newsletter provider export, Website capture export, Event signup export, Suppression export, and Other reviewed source.
3. 3

   Enter the CSV contents

   Paste the CSV into CSV contents. Include an email column. If you attest that affirmative consent was reviewed, include a consent column. The CSV must have consistent row widths and cannot use duplicate or empty headers.
4. 4

   Attest suppression and consent carefully

   Select “This source includes suppression or bounce/complaint data.” Select “I have reviewed affirmative-consent evidence for this source” only when that review is true. A suppression column can be named suppressed, suppression, suppression_status, bounced, or complained.
5. 5

   Run the dry run

   Select Run dry run. Velveteen validates and normalizes the CSV, safely neutralizes formula-leading cells, hashes the source deterministically, stages valid rows, and reports valid, invalid, subscribed, pending, unsubscribed, and suppressed counts.

What should I know before reviewing the staged job?

A valid email address alone is not affirmative consent. Without the affirmative-consent attestation, a non-unsubscribed row is pending. Explicit suppression, bounce, or complaint values map to suppressed before consent mapping. Malformed CSV structure, duplicate headers, a missing email column, or a row-width mismatch fails validation instead of being silently corrected.

What happens after the dry run?

1. 1

   Open Staged import jobs

   Check the source name, source type, status, valid and invalid counts, and timestamp in the review queue.
2. 2

   Enter a review reason

   The review reason must contain at least three characters.
3. 3

   Choose Approve or Cancel

   The review queue exposes Approve and Cancel while a job is awaiting_review or quarantined and suppression data is recorded. Approval is a review checkpoint; it does not trigger provider delivery.