Import Subscribers: Prepare your CSV file

Importing subscribers is core to the experience of any good email platform.

While often you will want to have leads flow into your account that opt-in or purchase something from you, it's common to have an existing set of subscribers from another email system you'd like to import.

Note: Campaign Refinery strictly allows permission-based opt-in subscribers only. No cold or 3rd party data is permitted on the platform. Any use of this type of data will result in an immediate and permanent ban from the platform without refunds.


  1. Go to Contacts>Import Contacts at the left-side panel menu. Here you will be able to select Upload a .CSV file.

  2. Preparing Your CSV. Please make sure your contacts are in the most common file format used by email platforms, CSV (Comma Separated Values).
    1. Each column can have data or descriptions you'd like to use for tags within the system. By default, every new Campaign Refinery account has fields for:
      • First Name
      • Last Name
      • Email Address

If you'd like to import additional custom fields, such as phone, address, etc., you should prepare them in advance. You can read our instructions for custom fields here.

One great feature of Campaign Refinery is the ability to create and/or apply tags to contacts during import. This is especially useful for converting from a prior email platform, regardless if it used the idea of tags or lists.

    1. Preparing for Tags. When you get your CSV from an existing email tool, it will likely look something like this.

    3. You'll notice that under "Tags" (which may be "Lists" for you), there are multiple names with a comma. Before you import them into Campaign Refinery, you'll need to convert these into their columns.
    4. Select the column with the bulk data, then select "Text to Columns"

    6. Next, Excel will walk you through a Wizard just a few clicks away.

      • Text to Columns Step 1 Leave the first step as "Delimited", and click "Next>".

      • Text to Columns Step 2 By default, it will have a tab selected and show a preview below about how the data will be altered.

        In this example, our data is separated by commas, so we selected "Comma" and the preview reflects what we want the data to do.

      • Text to Columns Step 3 Leaving the defaults here usually is completely fine. Just ensure you don't have additional columns of data to the right of where you started, or you may overwrite those fields with your new data set.

        Click "Finish" to have a nicely formatted document ready for import.

      • You'll notice that the tags are now broken out into their columns. This is how Campaign Refinery wants you to input it, so you should be all set!



  1. Now you can go back into Campaign Refinery and click the "Choose File" option to select your nicely formatted CSV. After choosing the file, the file name should populate, and then you can click Continue

You can refer to this guide on How to Import Your Subscribers List with CSV

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