Importing Leads Without an Email Address Into Your Marketing Database

It has happened to everyone — you have a list of prospects without email addresses and you have to import them into your marketing automation tool. What do you do? Do you import the list as is?

Most marketing automation tools including Marketo, Eloqua, HubSpot and Pardot use email address as the unique identifier. What if you import 100 people without email addresses and 10 of them already exist in your database with email addresses? You'll create 10 duplicate records.

If you import a list without email addresses, you are ultimately creating duplicate records which may result in incorrect scoring, delayed MQLs and higher database cost.

What to do when you have a list of prospects without email addresses?

Before importing, check how many of these leads you already have. Match existing records based on First Name + Last Name + Company, or First Name + Last Name + Phone Number. If you get a match, use the existing record's email address while importing.

How to do it with a SQL database

• Export the required data (First Name, Last Name, Phone, Company) from your marketing database.
• Import it into a SQL database, and import the new list into a separate table.
• Write a query to find matches and append the email address to your list.

How to do it with Excel

• If your database isn't too big, do the matching in Excel.
• Concatenate First Name + Last Name + Company in a separate column in both lists.
• Use VLOOKUP on that concatenated column to populate email addresses in the list to be imported.

For records you still can't match, try to append the email address (or call the people) before importing. It's a bit time-consuming but it reduces database maintenance cost and keeps your database duplicate-proof.

Do you really need email addresses?

• Email is the most direct way to reach audiences 1:1 and works across mobile and desktop.
• It's easy to customize and integrate with other tactics, and inexpensive.
• People keep their email addresses for years.
• Email kickstarts your lead nurturing flow and enables highly targeted, personalized campaigns with high ROI.