Question

What are the best practices and important considerations when using the Upload Profiles and Custom Traits feature for CSV uploads in Segment?

Product

Segment

Environment

Segment Console

Answer

When uploading profiles via CSV, follow these best practices:

• Include an identifier column, such as email or anonymous_id, to ensure proper identity resolution.
• Leave unknown values blank to avoid introducing bad data.
• Use case-sensitive headers for custom trait columns.
• Avoid trailing, leading, or multiple consecutive spaces in data fields.
• Ensure column keys do not contain invisible Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) characters, which some text editors may add.
• Consent preferences cannot be updated via CSV uploads; use a Segment Consent Preference Updated event for those changes.

Additional Information 

For more details and up-to-date guidance, refer to the official documentation on CSV uploads in Segment Engage.