Help Center · Finding Buyers

Importing and Exporting Contacts

Most wholesalers do not start from zero. You probably have an existing list of buyers, investors, and contacts sitting in a spreadsheet, a CRM, your phone's contact list, or scattered across multiple tools. Deal Run is designed to work with your existing data -- you can import your entire buyer database via CSV on day one and start marketing deals to your full network immediately.

Similarly, your data is never locked inside Deal Run. You can export your full buyer list at any time as a CSV file for use in other tools, email platforms, or as a backup.

CSV import

The import process accepts standard CSV (comma-separated values) files. Most spreadsheet applications (Google Sheets, Excel, Numbers) can export to CSV, and most CRMs offer CSV export as well.

Preparing your file

Before importing, ensure your CSV file has a header row (the first row should contain column names, not data). Deal Run recognizes common column names automatically, but any header names will work because you will manually map them during the import process.

The only required field is a name or entity name -- you need at least something to identify the contact. All other fields are optional. A minimal import might have just two columns: "Name" and "Phone." A rich import might have name, entity name, email, phone, address, city, state, zip, strategy, budget range, and notes.

Common column names that Deal Run auto-recognizes:

Name fields: name, full_name, first_name, last_name, contact_name, buyer_name
Entity fields: entity, entity_name, company, company_name, llc, business_name
Email fields: email, email_address, contact_email
Phone fields: phone, phone_number, mobile, cell, telephone
Address fields: address, street_address, mailing_address, city, state, zip, zip_code

If your column names do not match these patterns, you will map them manually in the next step. Do not worry about reformatting your file -- Deal Run handles the mapping for you.

Starting the import

Navigate to your buyer list page and click the "Import" button in the top toolbar. A dialog will appear prompting you to select a CSV file from your computer. Drag and drop the file onto the dialog or click "Browse" to select it from your file system. Files up to 10MB are supported, which accommodates lists of tens of thousands of contacts.

Mapping columns

After uploading your file, Deal Run displays a column mapping screen. On the left, you see each column from your CSV file along with a preview of the first few values. On the right, you see a dropdown for each column where you select which Deal Run field it maps to.

Deal Run auto-maps columns when the header name matches a recognized pattern. For example, a column named "email" is automatically mapped to the Email field. Columns that are not auto-mapped show "Skip this column" as the default, which means their data will not be imported. Change the dropdown to the appropriate Deal Run field to include that column's data.

Available mapping targets:

Full Name (or separate First Name / Last Name)
Entity Name / Company
Email
Phone
Secondary Phone
Mailing Address
City
State
Zip Code
Tags (comma-separated values within the cell will be split into individual tags)
Notes
Status

You can map multiple source columns to different Deal Run fields but cannot map two source columns to the same target field. If your CSV has both "cell_phone" and "office_phone," map one to Phone and the other to Secondary Phone.

Previewing before import

After mapping, Deal Run shows you a preview of how the first 10 rows will look after import. Review this carefully -- if names are showing up in the email field or phone numbers are in the notes field, go back and fix your column mapping. The preview is your last chance to catch mapping errors before the data is written.

The preview also shows a summary: total rows in file, rows that will be imported, rows that will be skipped (due to missing required fields), and rows that match existing contacts (duplicates).

Deduplication during import

Deal Run automatically deduplicates contacts during import to prevent your buyer list from being cluttered with duplicate entries. Deduplication works by matching incoming records against your existing buyer list using three strategies, checked in order:

Email match: If the incoming record has an email address that exactly matches an existing buyer list entry, it is treated as a duplicate.
Phone match: If emails do not match (or are not present), Deal Run checks whether the phone number matches an existing entry (after normalizing formats -- stripping dashes, parentheses, country codes).
Name + address match: If neither email nor phone matches, Deal Run checks whether the combination of name and mailing address matches an existing entry.

When a duplicate is detected, the existing record is updated rather than overwritten. New data fills in empty fields on the existing record, but does not replace data that is already present. For example, if your existing record has a phone number but no email, and the imported record has an email but no phone, the result is a merged record with both phone and email. Existing data is never deleted during import.

The import summary tells you exactly how many records were new additions versus updates to existing contacts.

CSV export

Exporting your buyer list produces a CSV file containing all fields for every contact in your current view. If you have filters active, only the filtered contacts are exported. If no filters are active, the entire list is exported.

To export, click the "Export" button in the top toolbar of the buyer list page. The CSV file downloads to your browser's default download location. The exported file includes the following columns:

Name
Entity Name
Email
Phone
Secondary Phone
Phone Type (mobile, landline, VoIP)
Mailing Address, City, State, Zip
Tags (comma-separated)
Status (new, contacted, interested, not interested, deal sent)
Contact Quality Grade (A, B, C, D)
Offers Made (count of offers this buyer has submitted through your Deal Run marketing pages)
Deals Closed (count of deals this buyer has closed with you)
Date Added
Last Contacted
Source (search, manual, import)
Notes

The export includes all data you have accumulated for each contact, including skip trace results and interaction history. This makes the export useful both as a backup and as a data source for external tools.

Zapier integration

Deal Run connects to Zapier, which allows you to sync your buyer list with over 6,000 other applications without any coding. Common Zapier integrations for wholesalers include:

Google Sheets: Automatically add new buyer list entries to a shared Google Sheet that your team can view.
Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign: Sync buyers to an email marketing list for drip campaigns outside of Deal Run's built-in email blasting.
Podio or Monday.com: Push new buyers to a project management tool for team assignment and follow-up tracking.
Slack or Discord: Get a notification in your team chat whenever a new buyer is added to your list or when a buyer submits an offer.
Google Contacts or Outlook: Sync buyer phone numbers and emails to your phone's contact list so you see who is calling when an investor calls you back.

To set up a Zapier integration, go to Account > Integrations in Deal Run and follow the Zapier connection flow. You will authenticate your Deal Run account within Zapier and then configure triggers (events in Deal Run that start the workflow) and actions (what happens in the connected app).

Available Zapier triggers:

New buyer added to list
Buyer status changed
Buyer skip traced
New offer received from a buyer

Bulk operations

When managing a large buyer list, individual edits become impractical. Deal Run supports bulk operations for common actions:

Bulk tag: Select multiple contacts, then apply one or more tags to all of them at once. Useful for tagging everyone from a specific search (e.g., select all investors from your Houston search and tag them "Houston").
Bulk status update: Change the status of multiple contacts simultaneously. For example, after a phone session where you called 30 investors, you can select all 30 and change their status from "New" to "Contacted."
Bulk delete: Remove multiple contacts from your buyer list. A confirmation dialog prevents accidental deletion. Deleted contacts can be re-added later through import or search, but their tags, status, and interaction history will not be recovered.
Bulk export: Export only the selected contacts as a CSV, rather than the entire list. Useful for creating targeted sub-lists for specific campaigns or sharing a segment with a partner.

To use bulk operations, click the checkbox in the header row of the buyer list to select all visible contacts, or hold Shift and click individual rows to select a range. The bulk action toolbar appears at the top of the list whenever one or more contacts are selected.

Tips for a clean buyer list

Tag on entry. Apply tags when you first add an investor, not weeks later. It takes 5 seconds when the context is fresh and saves you from reviewing hundreds of untagged contacts later.
Update statuses religiously. After every outreach session, update contact statuses. Your buyer list is only as useful as the data in it. If 200 contacts are all "New" even though you have called half of them, the status field is worthless.
Merge, do not duplicate. If you are importing from multiple sources, import them all into the same buyer list and let deduplication handle the merging. Do not maintain separate lists for "REIA contacts" and "PropStream leads" -- tags handle that distinction within a single unified list.
Export monthly backups. Even though your data is stored securely in Deal Run's cloud database, exporting a monthly CSV backup is good practice and takes seconds.