SMS Marketing

Guide: Preparing Your Contacts for SMS Sending

BETA:
This feature is currently in beta and is being tested by a select group of Kajabi users. If you have questions or concerns about this feature please don't hesitate in reaching out to support@kajabi.com.

To help you send SMS messages successfully, Kajabi now includes a dedicated Mobile Phone Number field. This helps ensure your phone numbers are clean, accurate, and ready to go.

Follow the guide below to make sure your contacts are set up correctly.

⚠️ Heads-up: This guide involves editing spreadsheets. If you’re not comfortable with Excel or Google Sheets, ask someone from your team for help, or reach out to Kajabi support, and we’ll walk you through it!

In this article:

Why Cleaning Your Phone Numbers Matters

Before diving into the steps, here are three key reasons why cleaning your phone numbers is essential:

  1. Improved Deliverability – Incorrectly formatted numbers may be rejected by carriers, meaning your message never gets delivered.
  2. Regulatory Compliance—SMS is highly regulated. Valid numbers, correct formatting, and opt-in tracking are essential to staying compliant.
  3. Better Results, Lower Costs—Clean numbers reduce failed sends, preserve message credits, and help your campaigns perform better.

Step 1: Export Your Contacts

  1. Navigate to your Kajabi Dashboard and click on Contacts.
  2. Select All Contacts by clicking the checkbox at the top.
  3. Click Export to download your contacts. You will receive the exported file via email.

Step 2: Download your list of contacts

  • Go to your email and download the list of exported contacts

Step 3: Open your list of contacts in a spreadsheet editor (Google Sheets, Excel, or Numbers) 

  • Open your contact list spreadsheet in a spreadsheet editor so you can edit the columns
  • You’ll see something like this: 

Step 4: Keep the Email Column, Phone Number Column, and Mobile Phone Number Column, and remove the rest

  • Keep just these 3 columns and remove the others: 
    • Email address — So we know which contact the phone number belongs to.
    • Phone number — Your old phone number field.
    • Mobile Phone Number — This is the new field Kajabi uses to send SMS messages.
  • Remove the other columns to keep things simple and reduce mistakes:

Step 5: Use a Spreadsheet Formula to Format Phone Numbers for SMS

Kajabi needs your phone numbers to be in a specific format so that messages can be delivered successfully. This step will help you clean up and reformat your existing numbers.

What You Need to Do:

You’re going to create a new column that holds your phone numbers in the correct format — starting with a “+1” for U.S. numbers, followed by the area code and phone number (no spaces or symbols).

💡 Example:

  • If your number looks like this: (425) 308-1234 ❌
  • You want it to look like this: +14253081234 ✅

When formatting phone numbers for SMS, you can use a simple spreadsheet formula to combine the international code with the existing phone number quickly. 

Follow these steps to apply the formula: 

  • Insert a new column next to the phone number column and call it “International code”
  • Add in the international code for that phone number. In most cases, it should be “1” for the US.

  • Go to the Mobile Phone Number (For SMS reminders) Field and add in the following formula: 

="+"&B2&C2

  • This formula means add a “+” sign to your international code column. Make sure you remove any spaces or special characters you might have. 
Note:
The columns in your spreadsheet might be different, so please adjust them according to your spreadsheet layout:

  • Then extend the formula (Drag the formula down for the rest of the rows) to the rest of your Mobile Phone Number Column:

  • Once you extend the formula to the additional columns, you might realise some phone numbers are incorrect. Please go through them and adjust them:

  • ✅ Remove any spaces from your phone numbers
  • ✅ Remove any special characters or symbols (like dashes, parentheses, or dots)
  • ✅ Check that each number has the correct number of digits. For the US: 
    • Area codes are 3 digits
    • Local number: 7 digits
  • Example:
    • If your number looks like this: (425) 308-1234 ❌
    • You want it to look like this: +14253081234 ✅(11 digits total, no special symbols or no spaces).
  • Once you have adjusted all the columns and your numbers are correct, you should see something like this: 

Step 6: Create a Test Spreadsheet to Upload (Best Practice) 

Before you import your full contact list, it’s a good idea to test it with just a few rows. This helps you make sure everything works before uploading hundreds or thousands of contacts. 

Follow these quick steps:

1. Prepare a Test Spreadsheet

  • Create a new spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheets).
  • Add just 3-5 rows of sample contact data from this spreadsheet

2. Save as CSV

  • Save or download the file as a .CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file - which you can choose when saving in Excel or Google Sheets

3. Upload the Test Spreadsheet

  • Go to your Kajabi Dashboard → Contacts → Import Contacts. 
  • Click Import CSV and select your test file. 

4. Match the spreadsheet columns to Kajabi fields:

  • Map the Email column to Kajabi’s Email field.
  • Map your Mobile Phone Number (For SMS Update) column to Kajabi’s Mobile Phone Number for SMS Reminders field.
  • Skip the Phone Number field as you’re not making updates to it. 
  • Skip all other fields so you don’t override any other data 

5. Confirm and Import

6. Verify Results

  • After importing, verify that the test contacts were added correctly in your Contacts list.
  • Check for any errors Kajabi might have flagged.

You’re almost there! Once you’ve confirmed your spreadsheet is correctly formatted and your test upload was successful, you’re ready for the final import of your full contact list.

Step 7. Complete the Final Import:

Follow the steps above on your final import. 

⚠️ Important Tip: Break Up Large Uploads

If you have a big contact list, don’t upload it all at once. Upload them in smaller chunks — like 100 - 200 contacts at a time, or for large-scale, 1,000 - 2,000 contacts at a time. It reduces errors and makes things easier to fix if something goes wrong. This helps with:

  1. Reduce the chance of import errors.
  2. Avoid upload timeouts or file issues.
  3. Make troubleshooting easier if anything goes wrong.

💬 Need Help?

If you run into any issues during the import process, don’t worry — our team is here to help. Reach out to support@kajabi.com or use the in-app chat to receive support.

 

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