2. Format Your Data

This article describes the guidelines for formatting your data file in order to successfully onboard it via digitalAudience Portal.

Your data must be in a CSV file encoded in UTF-8.

For data matching, we use a combination of:

• email address

• phone number (mobile or landline)

• postal address (a postal code, house number, house number extension)

• personal ID number (only for Sweden).

You can onboard your data unhashed, as it will be hashed by digitalAudience within your browser. Alternatively, you can choose to hash the data yourself beforehand, using the SHA256 algorithm. The SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit) produces a 256-bit hash value, which is represented as a 64-character hexadecimal string.

Email

Use “Email“ as a column header in your data file. Make sure there is only one email address in a row.

If you would like to hash emails yourself, first lowercase all characters and remove any extra spaces.

For example:

[e-mail] > [e-mail] > A7DF77A9DB89B44110C704B680A24978579A3069B419DB95CBDA84541094ADBA
[e-mail] > [e-mail] > A7DF77A9DB89B44110C704B680A24978579A3069B419DB95CBDA84541094ADBA

Phone Number

Use “Phone“ as a column header in your data file. Make sure there is only one phone number in a row.

digitalAudience Portal will format phone numbers, using E.164 standard. It will remove all special characters such as a plus(+), backslash(/), dash(-), brackets(()), and a space( ).

Make sure that there is no (0) between a country code and a carrier code. An incorrect format will lead to a data matching error.

For example:

[phone] (an international mobile number)
[phone] (an international landline number)
0031201234567 (an international number)
0612345678 (Dutch phone mobile number)

If you want to hash phone numbers yourself, remove any special characters such as plus(+), backslash(/), dash(-), brackets(()), and a space( ) and reformat the number to conform to the 31XXYYYYYYY format. Here, XX is the carrier code and YYYYYYY is a seven-digit phone number.

For example:

[phone] > 31614123456 > 5253828BF4B74309F76C1B1B3FC379584D9DC139874764D5D134E6C0FC7235AA
0-10-123 4567 > 31101234567 > 649C4E17CAB8316FA164573FCD76B945793FBAFC8FCF1AD89F9FBCA9B29F51EB

Dutch Postal Address

The postal address consists of 3 parts; postal code, house number and a house number extension. The street name should not be included in the address.

First, remove the special characters like plus(+), backslash(/), dash(-), brackets(()), space( ). Then, lowercase and trim the parts. The house number and house number extension are padded with leading zeros to create a 5-character string. Finally, merge them in the following format, using '@' sign between the parts;

postcode@000housenumber@0000extension.

For example, if the address is 1059 CD, Valschermkade 18 C, then the resulting string is 1059cd@00018@0000c. If there is no house number extension, then it becomes 1059cd@00018@00000.

Apply SHA256 hashing algorithm to the resulting string.

If hashing the postal address beforehand is not possible, due to complex formatting necessary for matching, it is also possible to use address parts as plain text.

Use “postal code“, "house number" and "extension" as a column headers in your data file.

Leave a cell empty if there is no extension.

Example of how your file should look like:

Swedish Postal Address

A typical Swedish address consists of a postal code, street, house number, house number extension, and apartment number.

Every part of the address is trimmed of white spaces from the beginning and the end and then lowercased. House number, extension and apartment is padded with 7 zeros to the left, so that they are 7 characters long each. Finally, merge them in the following format, using '@' sign between the parts;

Postalcode@(0000000)HouseNumber@(0000000)Extension@(0000000)Apartment@Street

EX: 12345@0000003@000000a@0000000@banérgatan vag

Apply SHA256 hashing algorithm to the resulting string.

If hashing the postal address beforehand is not possible due to complex formatting necessary for matching, it is also possible to use address parts as plain text.

Use "postal code", "street", "house number", "extension" and "apartment" as a column headers in your data file. Put each address element in a separate column. Leave a cell empty if there is no house number, extension or apartment number.

Example of how your file should look like:

Examples Of Matching Netherlands

Example 1 - Not Matched

Email: [e-mail]

Huisnummer: 18

Toevoeging:

Postcode: 1059CD

Telefoonnummer: 31 (0) 612345678

Result: NOT MATCHED - The phone number is not matched (no (0) between a country code and a carrier code)

Example 2 - Not Matched

Email: [e-mail]

Huisnummer: Valschermkade 18

Toevoeging:

Postcode: 1059CD

Telefoonnummer: 31206691001

Result: NOT MATCHED - The house number is not matched (do not use the street name in the file, only house number)

Example 3 - Matched

Email: [e-mail]

Huisnummer: 18

Toevoeging: C

Postcode: 1059CD

Telefoonnummer: 31206691001

Result: MATCHED

Examples Of Matching Sweden

Example 1 - Not Matched

Email: [e-mail]

Gatunamn: gamla brogatan

Adresstillägg: d

Lägenthetsnummer:

Postnummer: 11124

Telefon: [phone]

Result: NOT MATCHED - The phone number is not matched (no (0) between a country code and a carrier code)

Example 2 - Matched

Email: [e-mail]

Gatunamn: gamla brogatan

Adresstillägg: d

Lägenthetsnummer:

Postnummer: 11124

Telefon: [phone]

Result: MATCHED