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Contacts Overview

Contacts are the recipients of your campaign messages. In Outreach, contacts are uploaded as a file during the Add Contacts step of the campaign wizard. This page walks through that step; the file rules themselves are covered in Files and Formats.

How Contacts Are Added​

Contacts are not stored as a persistent list in Outreach. Instead, each campaign has its own set of contacts, uploaded while the campaign is created.

  1. Upload a contact file — CSV, JSON, or XML — on the Add Contacts step.
  2. Map each field in the file to a recipient, variable, or priority role.
  3. Outreach validates the data and reports how many contacts will be imported.
Messages are created per run

Uploading contacts does not create messages. Messages are created for each valid contact when a run is created — not when the campaign is saved, and not when the run is later scheduled or started.

Accepted formats, field roles, row and size limits, encoding, and the rules that decide whether a row is valid are all documented in Files and Formats. Sample files you can copy are in Example Files.

Before the upload begins, Outreach asks you to confirm that you have obtained explicit consent from all contacts for communication. You must accept this confirmation to proceed. If you cancel, no file is uploaded.

Mapping Columns​

After a successful upload, Outreach displays the fields found in your file and asks you to assign a role to each one — the Destination that identifies the recipient, any Custom Variables you want to personalise with, an optional Priority, and Do not import for anything you want excluded. Mapping works the same way for CSV, JSON, and XML.

Each role, how many fields it accepts, and what it does are set out in Fields.

Contact Summary​

Once mapping is complete, the summary panel shows:

  • Total contacts: the number of valid rows that will be imported as messages
  • Invalid contacts: the number of rows that will be skipped

Invalid rows are skipped automatically rather than blocking the upload, and the campaign can still be saved and run with the remaining valid contacts. For exactly what makes a row invalid — and why a valid phone number can still be skipped — see How failures surface.

Contacts in Edit Mode​

When editing an existing campaign, the contacts step displays a read-only summary of the contact data. You cannot:

  • Upload a new contact file
  • Change the existing contact file
  • Modify field mappings

The original contact file is no longer accessible after the campaign is created, so if you need different contacts, create a new campaign. The step is still useful for reviewing which fields were mapped and what variable names are available in your template.

Next Steps​