When you upload your data through Convergence Cloud, you are providing it with data that it uses to find and match on people in CRM. This means that if Convergence Cloud finds one of your constituents but the email address does not match precisely what is in CRM, the upload will give you the constituent's email address from CRM, rather than what was in your original data file. This could be small differences such as giving you an @iu.edu rather than an @indiana.edu, as well as giving you an IU email address rather than a personal email.
Tips for matching with accuracy
When you have it available as a field, it's always recommended to use University ID as part of your Convergence Cloud upload. To do this, there are a few steps to follow.
- Add the column(s) of data to your spreadsheet.
- Standard upload: add a column called Contact.iuid__c
- Custom upload: add a column called Contact.iuid__c, and the mapping row (row two) called IUID
- Ensure your university IDs are formatted properly: IU's university IDs sometimes begin with zeros. This can be a problem in Excel if your file is not formatted properly.
- Begin your work in Excel in an .xlsx file format rather than a .csv. For the column of data that will contain your university IDs, right click on the whole column. Then click on Format Cells, select Text in the panel that pops up, and click OK.
- Complete all your work in the .xlsx file and only at the very end save out your file as a .csv. Once you do, do not open the .csv file again before uploading it to Convergence Cloud. The .csv will automatically drop the leading zeros off of your university IDs, and the upload will not work properly.
Upload methodology
Convergence Cloud's method for importing data is add and update. This means that when you already have data in your data extensions, you can simply upload a handful of records. The result will be that it will update any records that already are in your data extension (and not create duplicates!) and insert any new records it finds.
In some situations, you might want to completely replace the data in your data extension rather than add and update. You can do this rather than create a new data extension. Simply navigate to your data extension in Marketing Cloud, click on Records, and click the button on the right labeled Clear Data. Note: this will delete all the data in your data extension and you can't get it back. Make sure you're confident that you want to do this!