Upsert Contacts to a Campaign
Summary
Managing contact lists that include both existing and new contacts for Salesforce campaigns can be tricky. The article shows how the NPSP Data Import object simplifies this by allowing admins to upsert contacts and add them to campaigns in one streamlined process, avoiding manual matching and multiple import steps. Using the NPSP Data Import, you can load your spreadsheet data, optionally preview the import results, and then process the records into contacts, campaigns, and campaign members—all in just a few clicks. This approach also supports adding contacts to multiple campaigns and prevents duplicate contacts based on email matching.
Takeaways
- Use the NPSP Data Import object to upsert contacts and add them to campaigns in one step.
- Campaign Member Status values are free text; ensure spreadsheet values match your Salesforce statuses exactly.
- Perform a dry run with the NPSP Data Import tool to validate record matching before final import.
- You can create new campaigns or link to existing ones using Campaign Name or Donation Campaign Source fields.
- The importer prevents duplicate contacts when adding the same person to multiple campaigns.
There are all kinds of scenarios in which we find ourselves with a list of people that we want to add to a campaign but we know the list includes a mix of existing Salesforce contacts and people that might be in the database yet. Happens all the time, right? Maybe you get a handwritten sign-in sheet. Or someone emails you the list of people they want to add to an event. Or youre combining lists from several people. In this situation, what we really want to do is an upsert of contacts (Upsert means up date them if they exist, otherwise in sert them as new records.) and also add those contacts to a campaign. I suppose, depending on what were doing, the campaign might already be in Salesforce or we need to create it for this import.