Utilizing Notion Automation for Notion Importing

If you’re looking to streamline your customer onboarding process, Notion’s automation features can save you hours of manual work. In this guide, I’ll walk you through a practical example of importing new customer data into Notion and automating key onboarding tasks—perfect for agencies, startups, or anyone managing client relationships.

1. Import Your Customer Data

Start by gathering your new customer list, often stored in Google Sheets or Excel. In many cases, company and contact details are bundled together in a single spreadsheet. Notion makes it easy to import this data:

• Use Notion’s native CSV import feature to bring your spreadsheet into a database.

• You can also use tools like Space Loader for bulk imports.

Tip: Make sure your CSV headers match your Notion database properties for a smooth import.

2. Automate Contact Creation and Linking

Once your company data is imported, you can set up a Notion automation to:

• Automatically create a main contact in your Contacts database for each new company.

• Relate each contact to their respective company using Notion’s relational database features.

This is done by configuring an automation trigger: when a new company is added and marked as a customer, Notion automatically generates a contact record and links it to the company.

3. Generate Onboarding Tasks Automatically

To ensure nothing falls through the cracks, automate the creation of essential onboarding tasks:

• For each new company, Notion can create tasks to retrieve social media logins (YouTube, Facebook, X/Twitter).

• Assign these tasks to the relevant team member and set their status to “Not Started.”

• Duplicate the task template for each social platform to save time.

4. Schedule Follow-Up Meetings

A crucial step in onboarding is scheduling a strategy meeting with the main contact. With Notion automation, you can:

• Create a “Discuss Social Media Strategy” task linked to both the company and the contact.

• Set the due date to seven days after the contact is created using Notion’s date formulas (e.g., `dateAdd(today(), 7, "days")`).

5. Prevent Duplicate Records

Before importing, enable Notion’s duplication check (e.g., using the company website as a unique identifier) to avoid creating duplicate entries in your database.

6. Expand with Integrations

For advanced workflows, consider sending webhooks to external tools like Zapier or Make. This lets you trigger actions in other software (e.g., Slack notifications, CRM updates) whenever a new customer is onboarded in Notion.

7. Review and Optimize

After importing, review your Notion databases:

• Confirm that each company has a related contact and the correct onboarding tasks.

• Check that all fields (email, job title, relationships) are properly filled.

Final Thoughts

By combining data import with Notion’s automation and relational database features, you can turn a tedious onboarding process into a seamless, error-free workflow. Whether you’re onboarding customers, managing projects, or organizing personal tasks, these strategies will help you get the most out of Notion.

If you found this guide helpful, give it a like and check out our other posts for more Notion productivity tips!