The Scenario
You are a campaign manager at a DTC brand. The re-engagement push goes out in 72 hours.
Your retention team ran a lapse analysis and exported 600 churned customers into an Excel workbook: eSputnik contact IDs in column B, emails in column A. All 600 need to be in eSputnik's "Win-Back Targets" static segment before the campaign builder can configure the send.
The bad version of this task:
- You open eSputnik and navigate to the segment management UI
- The segment add via UI only supports adding one contact at a time, or uploading a CSV of contact IDs
- You try to save the workbook as CSV, but the ID column has mixed types (some are numeric, some are text with leading zeros) and Excel's CSV export drops the leading zeros
- The upload fails on 40 rows because the IDs are now wrong
- You manually fix the ID column formatting in the workbook, re-export, re-upload
- You get an error on 85 rows because those contacts need to be created in eSputnik first before they can be added to a segment.
- Now you have two tasks and 48 hours left.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the workbook and handles the segment add, including creating missing contacts first if needed.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Take the 600 eSputnik contact IDs in column B of my Excel sheet and attach them all to segment 'Win-Back Targets' in one operation.
Or if you are working from emails rather than IDs:
For each email in column A of this workbook, add the contact to eSputnik static segment 'Win-Back Targets'. If any email does not have an existing eSputnik contact, create the contact first and then add them to the segment. Write the result for each row into column C.
SheetXAI handles the segment add, creating missing contacts where needed, and writes the per-row result back into column C.
What You Get
600 churned customers in the "Win-Back Targets" segment, confirmed and ready for the campaign builder:
- All contacts added — including any who were not yet in eSputnik
- Leading zeros preserved — SheetXAI reads contact IDs as strings, not as Excel numbers, so the IDs stay intact
- Column C shows the result per row — "added," "already member," or the specific error
- Segment populated before the 72-hour deadline — the campaign builder is not waiting on you
Leading zeros in Excel are the silent failure mode for ID columns. When you save as CSV, Excel converts text-formatted numbers to numeric and drops leading zeros. SheetXAI reads the workbook directly and passes the raw string value to the API, so the IDs stay correct.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Lapse analysis exports always have rough edges. SheetXAI handles them in the same prompt.
When the workbook has emails but no eSputnik contact IDs
The retention team gave you emails. The segment add requires eSputnik's internal IDs.
For each email in column A of this workbook, look up the eSputnik contact ID and write it into column B. Then add all found contacts to static segment 'Win-Back Targets'. For emails with no matching contact, write "NOT FOUND" in column B and create the contact before adding to the segment.
When you only want contacts who have not opened an email in 90 days
The retention team's export included all lapsed customers, but you want to filter to those who also have not engaged with email.
Filter this workbook to rows where column C (last email open date) is more than 90 days ago or is blank. Add the filtered contacts to eSputnik segment 'Win-Back Targets' using the contact ID in column B. Write the result for each row into column D.
When contacts need to be split across two segments by tier
Column C has a tier label: "High Value" or "Standard." High Value churners go into one segment, Standard into another.
For each row where column C is 'High Value,' add the contact ID in column B to eSputnik segment ID 8821. For 'Standard' rows, add the contact ID to segment ID 8822. Write the segment destination and result for each row into column D.
When you want to populate the segment and trigger the first send in one session
The campaign is ready. You want to handle the segment population and the first send without switching between tasks.
Add all contact IDs in column B of this workbook to eSputnik segment 'Win-Back Targets'. After confirming the segment is populated, send eSputnik prepared message template ID 9044 to all contacts in 'Win-Back Targets'. Write the send count into cell C1.
The pattern: one prompt covers the data preparation and the campaign action together. No back-and-forth between the workbook and the eSputnik UI.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any Excel workbook with a contact list you need to segment in eSputnik, then ask it to add them to the right segment. The eSputnik integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to bulk-import contacts into eSputnik from Excel or the eSputnik in Excel overview.