Each entity you want to import has to follow the same data structure as indicated in the API documentation:

If you use one of our plugins or integrations to connect your website to Brevo, Check the documentation specific to your plugin or integration in our dedicated section Plugins & Integrations.

The Brevo CDP allows you to import structured data from FTP servers (with CSV or JSON/JSONL files) for one-shot or recurring automated imports. When importing your data to the Brevo CDP via FTP servers, your files need to follow a specific format to be imported correctly.

Check below for our general and specific file requirements, along with recommendations for your FTP files:

📑 General file requirements

All the files containing your data have to follow the following requirements before importing them into the Brevo CDP:

• Save your file in one of the following formats:
  

  .CSV

  .JSON/.JSONL

  .ZIP/.GZIP

  Check our specific file requirements for your CSV and JSON/JSONL files.

• Create one file per entity. An entity is the scope of data you are importing such as contacts, orders, or products for example. 
• Save your file with UTF-8 or UTF-8 BOM encoding. These types of file encoding allow for reading the content of your file when it contains special characters.
• Each record in an entity must have at least the source primary key value filled.
  A source key is a column from your file that acts as a unique identifier (ID) for the records of a given entity. For example, for the Contacts entity, the ID could be contact_id or contact_email, and for the Orders entity, the ID could be order_id. You can also combine different columns that will form a unique ID for each record, such as order_id AND product_id for the Order items entity. 

📄 Specific file requirements 

The CSV and JSON files require additional elements to be compatible with the Brevo CDP. Open the tab corresponding to the file you want to import to the Brevo CDP to learn more: 

[
  {
  "field": 1,
  "object": {
    "object_field": 1
     }
   },
  {
  "field": 2,
  "object": {
    "object_field": 2
     }
   }
]

 {
   "records": [
       {"field": 1,
        "object": {
           "object_field": 1
         }
       },
       {"field": 2,
        "object": {
           "object_field": 2
         }
        }
   ]
}

{
  "field": 1,
  "object": {
    "object_field": 1
   }
 }
 {
   "field": 2,
   "object": {
     "object_field": 2 
 }
}

✅ Recommandations

• By default, new and updated data are imported every hour to ensure relevant and up-to-date data.  
• You can use the following naming convention: <entity>-<source>-<subsection>_<date>.csv:
  • Elements surrounded by <> must be replaced with a real value and are required. For example, <entity> will be <contacts> for a file containing contacts.
  • <entity> is one of the business entities described above.
  • <source> is the name of system where the data comes from (e.g. prestashop, pos, etc.).
  • <subsection> is an optional parameter to used to provide additional information. For example, you can have two files of contacts for a single source contacts_prestashop_customers and contacts_prestashop_subscribers.
  • <date> is the date of the day when the file was created. The date must follow the format YYYYMMDD_H24MISS. For instance, a file created on 2024-10-19 at 15:12:39 will have the following suffix _20241019_151239.csv.
• The file name can be extended with additional information at the beginning (prefix) and directly before the date .csv extension (suffix). Suffixes should be placed before the date.

Databases and datawarehouses, such as PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MySQL, or BigQuery, do not require specific elements to be compatible with the Brevo CDP. However, we highly recommend setting up incremental import by adding a last_updated column to your database or datawarehouse. 

Incremental import allows you to: 

• Increase performances.
• Keep up-to-date data as incremental imports fetch new records every hour, ensuring your data stays up to date. Without incremental imports, you can only import new records once a day through a full import.
• Be more eco-friendly.