Importing Leads from a CSV File

Updated August 6, 2026·Capturing Leads·Share on X

Badge-scan vendors, past events, and partner lists all arrive as spreadsheets. The CSV import wizard brings them into Conference Hero cleanly: mapping your columns, splitting names, and skipping duplicates so you do not end up with the same person three times.

On the Leads page, open the toolbar and click Import CSV.

Step 1: Upload

Drop in your file. The wizard parses it in the browser and handles the usual mess: comma, semicolon, or tab separators, and quoted fields with commas inside them. Large files are chunked automatically, so a file of several thousand rows imports in the background without you babysitting it.

Step 2: Map columns

Match your spreadsheet columns to lead fields: first name, last name, company, title, email, phone, and notes. The wizard guesses from your header row, so most mappings are already correct when you arrive.

If your file has a single full name column, choose the "Full name (split)" option and the wizard splits it into first and last name for you.

Step 3: Options and results

Before importing, set:

Conference - which event these leads belong to.
Source - choose "Badge-scan export" to mark them as badge scans, which applies the same scoring bonus as a live badge scan. Otherwise they are tagged as a CSV import.
Review - send rows straight into your pipeline as approved, or into the review queue to check before they count.

When the import finishes, you get a results summary: how many leads were created, how many were linked to existing leads, and how many rows were skipped, with the reason for each skip.

Dedupe by email

Import dedupes across your whole workspace by email. If a lead already exists, the import links them to the selected conference instead of creating a duplicate. Rows with no name at all, or an invalid email address, are skipped and reported so you can fix and re-import them.

Limits

Each request handles up to 100 rows, and the wizard chunks larger files automatically up to roughly 5,000 rows. For a file bigger than that, split it and import in batches. To keep imports fast, bulk imports skip lead enrichment, so they do not use enrichment credits.

Tips for a clean import

Put clear labels in your header row so the auto-mapping guesses correctly and you have less to fix in step 2.
Make sure the email column holds one valid address per row, since email is what dedupe and follow-up depend on.
Import into the review queue the first time you try a new file, so you can spot mapping mistakes before the leads count.
Re-export from your badge vendor rather than editing their file by hand; hand-edited spreadsheets are where stray commas and broken rows come from.

AI Lead Import (for PDFs and messy files)

When your source isn't a clean spreadsheet - an exhibitor directory, a speaker-bio PDF (including scanned ones), a sponsor list, or a screenshot - use AI Lead Import from the Leads toolbar instead. It reads the file and extracts everyone it can find, with no fixed cap; the number of leads is driven by what's in the document.

What it does beyond plain extraction:

Prioritizes and explains. Each lead gets a priority, a one-line reason they're worth meeting, and a suggested opener for the booth. People at your conference target accounts are boosted to High automatically.
Flags duplicates before you apply. Leads already in your workspace, or repeated within the same file, are labeled so you can skip them. Already-in-workspace leads are unchecked by default.
Shows a confidence signal and marks invalid emails so you know where to look before applying.
Assign as you go. Reassign owners per lead or all at once, so a booth team can split the list.
Enrichment is opt-in. Finding missing emails, titles, and LinkedIn uses enrichment credits, so it's off by default with your remaining credits shown - turn it on when you want it.

If you drop in a clean spreadsheet, AI Lead Import notices and offers to hand it to the column-mapping importer above, which is faster, more accurate, and doesn't use AI credits.