Importing contacts, subscriber list

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Importing contacts, subscriber list

Step 1: Groups

The first thing we have to do is create the “folder,” the virtual place to where we will upload our contacts.

We can’t import our subscribers without a virtual folder on our software.

As the purpose of this tutorial is to see the most basic aspects so that you can start working and sending emails; we are going to create a group.

Now, we will click on the menu subscribers -> Groups.

In this screen, we have to click the add button, to create a new group.

Creating a group is very simple; you only need to fill two values:

- Name

- Description

You only need to name the group and click on “Create group.”

The description is just an internal value, so we can organize our list of emails.

IMPORTANT

You should not paste the emails into the description box. Use this field only for identifying the group if you have several databases and want to create more than one group.

After clicking create a group, we will see this screen:

It is a short summary of the configured values, but it includes a shortcut, which we can use if we want to import contacts quickly (email only), we can click on this button, which will take us to a screen where we can paste our contacts.

It’s a quick option if we just want to include the email from our contacts, without names or other fields.

We will not use this option in this tutorial since we want to import a list of emails with other fields.

Step 2: Subscribers -> Imports

Now let’s import a new mailing list by clicking on the New import:

On the next screen, we’ll look at the available import options. For this article, we will use the option to import a CSV, or text file because I consider it to be more usual as it will allow you to import a mailing list with more fields and send personalized campaigns.

Let’s see the options:

Copy and paste: This option is the same as we saw before and we will not use it for this tutorial, although it may be a useful option for When you only have to past a few contacts.
Import files: Import from a TXT or CSV file, this is the option we will use today.
Import from Mailchimp: This option is very clear.

When you check the option, the system will display a box that you can use to drag the file that you want to import:

Step 3: File Format

You can import a CSV or TXT file (it must also be separated by commas). In this case, we will use a TXT file that will have this format:

As you can see, we have:

A row for each contact
Name
Email
Separated by a comma

We could import more values, using the same principle of separating them by commas, for example: name,email,city,address

In fact, the number of fields in the file doesn’t matter, as long as they are separated by commas, with a single contact per line.

Well, after creating this file, we can drag it in the “Drag the file” import box.

You can also click to browse the file on your computer.

Step 4: Import values

Once the file is uploaded, we will see a screen similar to this one:

Don’t worry about seeing so many options; it will be very easy to configure this screen. You will be sending your campaign in a few more minutes.

Let’s see the main points:

Field and columns: We will have to match the fields with the columns of the file. For this, we will use the drop-down. Please note that we can preview the data to confirm that the columns will be imported into the right fields. In this case, we need to select the column name and match it to the field name and pair the email field with the emails column.
Import to groups: Here we choose the group for which we want to import the contacts, just click and select it (note that there is also an option for creating the group right now)
Additional options: Finally we can choose what to do with existing subscribers. We can ignore them (if you check this option the existing emails will not be imported) or we can check to overwrite these emails.

Now you just need to click on Import, and the system will start saving you subscribers in your account.

IMPORTANT

In the drop-down field, you will see that there are embedded or “builtin” fields. These fields already exist by default on the system and don’t need to be created. You can use embedded fields such as name, address, city, etc.

When the process is finished, we’ll see a brief summary:

With the list of emails imported, and the result, with information about the status of each line in the database.

We have already imported our contacts.

Step 5: How can we see the imported contacts?

Very easy, we will go to the menu Subscribers –> subscribers:

We will do two things:

In the group box, we have to select the group that we want to see
And then we will click on search

So, on the list, we will only see the subscribers that belong to this group.

The import process is very simple; if you follow these steps, your list will be imported to your account.