Formatting phone numbers

Before you start adding contacts, you need to understand how to format your numbers and contact lists. This may be slightly different if you're sending to recipients locally or internationally.

Sending to recipients in your own country

Use the local number format, no changes.
ClickSend will apply your default country code to each number.

Sending to recipients in another country

Since you’re sending internationally, you’ll need to add the international code to each number. For example: 614xxxxxxxx, 1555xxxxxxx, 44xxxxxxxxx

Uploading a list of international contacts?

We recommend adding a column to your spreadsheet, with the two-character ISO country codes. For example: US. When uploading your list, you’ll need to map your data.

How to add contacts manually

You can add contacts one by one. Please note, contacts must always be part of a contact list.

Navigate to Contacts.
Click the blue +.
Name your contact list and select Add.
Then, click Start here to keep adding contacts.
Fill out all of the contact details including placeholders.
Click Add.

Read about placeholders to learn what they are and how to use them.

How to upload contact lists

Do you have a list of contacts in a spreadsheet? Perfect. You can upload your contacts in a few simple steps.

Navigate to Contacts.
Click the blue +.
Name your contact list and select Add.
Then, click Start here to keep adding contacts.
Select the Import Contacts tab.
Upload your Excel or CSV file and click Import.
Map your list data by matching your file’s columns to ClickSend’s fields.

Uploading contacts from an iPhone

Don’t manually create a contact list. You can export contacts from your iPhone and upload them to ClickSend.

Check that your contacts app is sharing data to your iCloud. If not, enable sharing.
On a PC or Mac, open a web browser and go to iCloud's website.
Log in with your Apple ID credentials.
Click Contacts from the iCloud dashboard.
In the bottom-left corner, click the gear icon.
Choose Select All to highlight all your contacts.
Click the gear icon again and select Export vCard to download a .vcf file.
Open a new browser tab and navigate to VCF to CSV Converter.
Click Choose File and upload your recently downloaded .vcf file.
Next to Format choose CSV. Then Comma in the next box and check the box next to Add header line.
Click Convert to generate the CSV file.
Save the converted file to your computer.
Follow this guide to upload your CSV file to ClickSend.

FAQs

How many contact lists can I create?

Via the Dashboard you can create up to 2,000 lists but can send messages to only the first 500. However, via the API you can have up to 2,000 contact lists.

What restrictions are there on the fields?

There is a limit on the number of character restrictions per field. The list is as follows:

First Name = 50

Last Name = 50

Custom 1 - 4 = 255

Organisation Name = 125

Email = 80

Address Line 1 = 60

Address Line 2 = 60

Address City = 30

Address State = 30

Address Postal Code = 10

Can subaccounts have custom permissions?

Yes. Permissions can be adjusted for each subaccount. For example:

Log into Account Settings > Subaccounts.
Edit the account and toggle Share Contacts to enable or restrict access.

Why did my contact list upload fail?

Check these things before you upload your list again:

1. Look for unusual characters, like í, â, € or ™. Search for them at the top of your spreadsheet and remove them.

2. Make sure the mobile phone field only has numbers and no other characters.

3. Check that every email address is in a valid format, not plain words or numbers.

4. Remove any columns you don't need to upload. This limits the chances of issues.

5. If a mobile number shows as 4.4791E+11, reformat the whole column. Select the column, right-click and choose Format Cells. Then select Number and set decimal places to 0. The numbers will show in full, for example 447912345678.

Also check that no field goes over its character limit. You can see the limits in What restrictions are there on the fields? above.

Still stuck? Contact our support team and we'll take a look.

Setting up contact lists