Context

When setting up a HubSpot-linked audience, you may want to add historical contacts that existed before the HubSpot integration was established. Rather than creating a separate audience for these contacts, you can add them to your existing HubSpot-linked audience using a CSV upload.

Answer

Yes, you can add contacts to a HubSpot-linked audience via CSV upload. This allows you to combine both your HubSpot-synced contacts and historical contacts in the same audience.

To add contacts via CSV to a HubSpot-linked audience:

1. Navigate to your existing HubSpot-linked audience

2. Click the "Add Contacts" button

3. Select "Upload CSV" from the options

4. Choose your CSV file containing the contact information

5. Map the CSV columns to the appropriate contact fields

6. Confirm the upload to add the contacts to your audience

Important Limitations and Troubleshooting

Single CSV Upload Only: You can only upload one CSV file at a time to an audience. If you need to add contacts from multiple CSV files, you'll need to either:

• Combine your CSV files into a single file before uploading, or

• Use a dynamic audience filter with the "Status" field to group contacts with the same status value across different CSV uploads

You cannot append a second CSV file to an audience that was originally created by uploading a CSV.

Workaround for Adding More Contacts After Initial CSV Upload

Use the Domain Filter Method: Add a “Unify Company Domain is one of” filter to your existing audience and paste the additional domains directly into the filter field.

Alternative Multi-CSV Management Strategy

Multiple Plays Approach: Create separate audiences for each CSV file, then set up multiple plays that feed into the same sequence.

If your audience appears empty after uploading the CSV, try these steps:

Wait for Processing: CSV files may take 5-10 minutes to process. If your audience appears empty initially, wait and refresh the page.

Understand Lists vs. Audiences: CSV uploads create a "List" in Unify. To use these uploaded contacts as an audience, you have two options:

• Quick method: Click “create play” directly from your uploaded list, which will automatically create the audience for you.

• Manual method: Create an audience with an “exists in list” filter that references your uploaded CSV list. To do this:

  1. Go to Audiences → Create Audience

  2. Under the Companies section, click “Add condition” (note: the “Exists in List” option is not visible in the quick filters and requires this additional step)

  3. Select “Exists in List” from the condition options

  4. Choose your uploaded CSV list from the dropdown

  5. Publish the audience

If you uploaded a CSV and don't see contacts in your audience, verify that you've created an audience filter pointing to the correct list using these steps.

Check Exclusions: Exclusions can significantly reduce audience size. Temporarily disable any exclusions to see if the audience size increases.

You can review which specific exclusions are active by clicking “Advanced” in the trigger configuration when setting up a Play.

• For companies: "Company Name" and "Domain" columns

  • The Domain column header must be exactly "Domain" (not "Domain Name", "URL", or other variations)

  • Domain values must be bare domains only (e.g., acme.com), not full URLs

  • Remove all protocols (http://, https://), www. prefixes, paths, and query strings

  • Example: Use jcrew.com instead of https://www.jcrew.com/products

  • Domains are case-insensitive but should not contain spaces or trailing slashes

• For people: "Email" OR "First Name" + "Last Name" + "Company Domain"

Note: LinkedIn URLs and Sales Navigator links cannot be used for enrichment. When enriching by name, you must provide the company domain (e.g., acme.com), not just the company name.

Consider Enrichment Limitations: If enrichment is enabled, some contacts may not appear if their information cannot be enriched due to insufficient public data.

Check for Duplicate Domains: Unify deduplicates companies by domain. If you see a "duplicates" warning or fewer companies than expected, check that each domain appears only once in your CSV and that domains don't differ only by whitespace or formatting. Companies with the same domain will be merged into a single entry.

• Verify Field Type Mappings: During the CSV mapping step, ensure numeric data is mapped to number fields, not text fields. For example, if your CSV contains employee count as a number, make sure it's mapped to a numeric field like "Employee Count" rather than a text field like "Employee Range". Incorrect field type mappings can cause uploads to fail or result in empty audiences.

Note: The maximum file size is 25,000 rows per CSV upload. Ensure all domains in your CSV are valid and exist.

Note that CSV uploads do not consume credits—credits are only used for enrichment and prospecting activities.

CSV Data Preparation Best Practices for HubSpot-Linked Audiences

Before uploading your CSV to a HubSpot-linked audience, proper data preparation can prevent mapping issues and ensure successful uploads on the first attempt.

Check for Duplicate Emails: The system automatically removes duplicate contacts by email address during CSV upload. If your audience shows fewer contacts than expected, verify that each email address appears only once in your CSV file.

Personal Email Domain Exclusions: Global exclusions automatically filter out personal email domains (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.). To include contacts with personal email addresses, add a “Company Domain” column to your CSV containing the company’s domain (e.g., for a Gmail user at Google, use google.com) and re‑upload.

Clean Your CSV Structure

• Remove Duplicate and Similar Columns: Having multiple columns with similar naming conventions (e.g., "Phone Number", "All Phone Numbers", "Mobile Phone Numbers") can cause mapping confusion during upload, even when fields are manually mapped. Keep only one "source of truth" column for each field type to ensure accurate mapping.

• Standardize Column Headers: Use clear, consistent column names that match expected field types. This reduces ambiguity during the mapping process and helps ensure data lands in the correct fields.

• Remove Irrelevant Columns: Before uploading, remove any columns that won't be used in your audience. This streamlines the mapping interface and reduces the chance of accidentally mapping data to incorrect fields.

The contacts from your CSV will be added to the same audience as your HubSpot-synced contacts, allowing you to manage all contacts in one place. Keep in mind that each CSV upload is processed individually and may take several minutes to complete, so plan accordingly if you have multiple files to import.