In this guide, you’ll learn how to create and securely upload a list of existing customers, typically covering the past 12 months, before launching your referral programme. This list prevents existing customers from being incorrectly treated as new customers and receiving rewards they’re not eligible for.
We’ll walk you through:
- What the historical customer upload is and why it’s needed
- How to format your data correctly in a CSV file
- How to send it safely using Mention Me’s Secure File Sharing feature
- What to expect once the upload is complete
Whether you're preparing for launch or updating your customer records, this guide ensures your referral programme starts off secure and accurate.
Historical customer upload
To ensure the integrity of your referral programme, it's important to distinguish between genuinely new customers and those who already have a purchase history with your brand. This is where a historical customer upload comes in.
Only new customers - those who’ve not made a purchase yet - can be referred (and therefore get a reward).
The Mention Me platform tracks everyone who has made a purchase or signed up to a service via the Mention Me tags, but we need a list of all the people who purchased or signed up before Mention Me went live, to know who should qualify for New Customer offers.
The “Historical Customer” file is uploaded into the platform to exclude people who are already existing customers.
This prevents them from pretending to be a new customer and claiming a reward. We ask for this information once, at the point you are ready to put your tags live, and request 12 months' worth of existing customer emails.
Existing Customers who try to receive new customer discounts or offers will see a message like this:
A message showing a user they can’t claim a reward as they’re an existing customer
The file should contain a list of email addresses. Nothing else is needed.
How to upload your data
To upload the order data to Mention Me, you must:
-
Create a CSV file
-
Add a complete list of all customer emails for the last 12 months in a single column list:
|
Field |
Field type |
Example of valid data |
|---|---|---|
|
Customer Email (Hashed) |
Customer email* *You have the option to send this hashed if you want - see here for further details
|
name@xyz.com |
3. Upload the CSV via the ‘Secure File Sharing’ feature in the platform. If you've not used this feature before, please see our guide: Sending Data Securely To Mention Me
Name your file in the following format: 'Brand name - Historical Customer'
4. We will then perform the historical customer upload for you, and our team will be in contact with you once it is complete
If you would prefer to send your historical order data using hashed emails, please see our guide: Hashing historical customer emails