How to add your subscribers
There are three ways to bring people into your list, and one of them is not available on every account.
If you cannot see the Import CSV button
File import only appears on administrator accounts. On a regular account you will not see it, because the platform has no way to verify where the consent for an externally sourced list came from.
- Add subscribers one at a time, from the Subscribers page, with name, email, and tags
- Publish a subscribe form on your site, so people join the list themselves
The second option is also the one that builds your consent record without any extra work.
Importing from a CSV file
The button sits on the Subscribers page, between Export CSV and Add subscriber.
File structure
- email: required
- name: optional
- tags: optional, several tags separated by commas
- metadata: optional, in JSON format
- consent_given_at: the real signup date, in YYYY-MM-DD format
The file must be UTF-8 and under 5 MB. You can run at most 10 imports per hour.
The column you cannot fix afterwards
consent_given_at is the only column a second import cannot correct. Without it, every subscriber appears to have signed up on the day of the import, which is exactly the proof you are missing when someone asks where you got their address.
Mailchimp and Brevo exports contain the date, but after a list consolidation it usually ends up buried in the metadata JSON, where the import does not look. Lift it into its own column before you upload.
The legal basis is chosen once, for the whole file
The dialog asks on what basis you have the right to email these people, with four options: they subscribed themselves, they are customers or partners, you have a contract with them, or legitimate interest.
The choice applies to the entire file. An inherited list almost always has different bases in the same file: people who signed up on the site, and people added because they are press. Split the list first, one file per basis, and import them separately.
What happens during the import
The result shows how many subscribers were imported and how many processed. Skipped rows appear separately with the reason, and rows with errors show the exact message. An email already in the list is marked as a duplicate and skipped. It is not overwritten and does not create a second entry.
A subscriber skipped as a duplicate does not receive the new tag from the second file either. If you import the same people again to add one more tag, the tag is lost silently. Import once, with the tags in place from the start.
Test on two addresses before the big file
The Subscribed column in the list shows today's date for everyone, because it displays when the row was created in the platform, not when the person gave consent. Consent is only visible in Export CSV, in the consent_date column.
Import two test addresses first, with old and distinct opt-in dates. If the export shows them exactly, the big file can go in.
Articles in the same category
- Tags and dynamic segments
How to apply tags, what the segment builder can do, why the starter templates do not work after an import, and how tags behave when you send.