Importing contacts and consent

You can bring your whole list over from Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Brevo, Shopify or anywhere else that exports a spreadsheet.

Go to Contacts → Import.

Before you start, one thing to understand, because it is the difference between this platform and the one that threw you off:

Everyone you import is held back until the file shows they said yes. Klaviyo let you upload anything and then blamed you for the complaints. Here, a list can only hurt you if you tell us it's clean and it isn't.

Export three files, not one

From your old platform, export:

1. Your subscribers.
2. Your unsubscribes.
3. Your suppressions.

The last two matter as much as the first. They are the people you must not email, and bringing them over is what keeps your reputation intact. Import all three.

The wizard

Three steps: Upload, Where did these people come from?, Result.

Step 1 — Upload

"Drop a CSV here, or choose a file."

"Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Brevo and Shopify exports all work. We only need a column called email; everything else comes along as an attribute."

1. Drop the file in, or press to choose one.
2. Up to 20,000 rows per file. Bigger files are refused with a message telling you the size and what to do: split it and upload the parts one after another. Nothing is lost, and anyone appearing in two files is merged.

The only required column is email. We also recognise first_name, last_name, phone, lang, consent_date, consent_source and consent_wording. Everything else in your file comes along as an attribute you can build segments on.

Step 2 — Where did these people come from?

This is the whole point of the wizard. Three cards, and you must pick one.

They said yes — "They ticked a box, filled a form, or opted in at checkout." Result: rows with an opt-in date become mailable. Rows without one are held back.

A connector got it wrong — "Shopify or WooCommerce opted them out by mistake." Result: held back until each person opens a re-permission email. This is the only bucket that can ever be released later.

I don't know — "Bought, inherited, or can't trace it." Result: kept on file, never mailed. This one can never be undone, and it excludes them across every brand on the platform, not just yours.

If you pick They said yes, three more boxes appear:

1. Which column shows it? — you must pick the column holding the opt-in date. Each option tells you how many rows have one. "Rows with no date in this column come in held back, exactly as the card above says. There is no way to override that, on purpose."
2. Where they opted in (optional) — a column, or we use the file name.
3. The exact wording they were shown (optional) — "This is the difference between evidence and a claim. If it isn't in the file we write down that it wasn't recorded — we never make one up."
4. Optionally, Put them on a list. They join today, not on their original signup date — otherwise a welcome sequence would fire at all of them at once.

Then press Import 4,821 rows.

Step 3 — Result

Four tiles: you can email (opt-in date present), held back (no proof of consent in the file), already here (merged with existing records), and bad addresses (misspelt, or not something we can send to).

Underneath, a card explains what happens to the held-back people:

They stay on your account and are never mailed. Each one becomes mailable the moment they order and tick the box, fill in a form, or you upload proof for them. There is no "mark all as consented" button, on purpose.

If any rows could not be read, a "Rows we could not read" table lists them by the line number your spreadsheet shows, with the reason. Nothing else was affected.

Why we ask at all

Because the four things a suppressed contact can be have completely opposite legal answers, and guessing wrong is how 34,825 real people ended up on one blacklist that took months to take apart — when only about 3,860 of them had actually opted out.

So: no default, no "assume they can be mailed", and no button that marks everybody as consented in one go.

Suppressed, unsubscribed and bounced

• Unsubscribed people stay on your account forever and are never sent marketing. They still get order receipts — somebody who unsubscribed and then buys is still entitled to their receipt.
• Suppressed means blocked from marketing. It happens on import (from your answer), when somebody complains, and when an address is dead.
• Dead addresses — a mailbox that does not exist — are removed the first time and never retried. That one stops everything, including receipts, because there is nowhere to send them.
• Importing the same file twice changes nothing. Nobody is unsubscribed nine times because you re-ran an import.

Why purchased lists are refused

During setup, if you say your list is "A purchased or other list" — "Bought, rented, scraped, or inherited from somewhere you cannot trace" — we refuse it outright:

We can't email people who never asked to hear from you. Import only the ones who signed up.

It is not a moral lecture. People who never asked report you as spam, and once a sending reputation is gone it takes months to rebuild — yours and everybody else's on this platform.

If you upload one anyway through the importer, it is accepted under "I don't know" and permanently excluded, across every brand here. So the honest answer is also the only one that does anything.

If you genuinely are not sure, say so. Those people are kept and never emailed, and the moment one of them signs up or buys, they become mailable that day. Nothing is lost.

If it didn't work

• "This file has no column called 'email'." The message lists the columns it did find. Rename your email column to email and save it again.
• "That file has no rows in it. Check you saved it as a CSV." Excel's default is .xlsx. Use File → Save As → CSV.
• "That file has 48,000 rows and we take 20,000 at a time." Split it. People who appear in two files are merged, so nothing doubles up.
• The file is too big in megabytes. Same fix — split it. The limit is about 0.85MB per upload.
• "Choose the column that holds the opt-in date." You picked "They said yes" but no date column. Without a date there is no proof, and a claim of consent with nothing behind it is not consent. If your file has no date, pick a different card.
• Everyone came in held back. Your file had no opt-in dates, or the column you picked was empty for most rows. Find the export that includes the dates.
• A row says "not a sendable email address". It is malformed. Fix it in the spreadsheet and re-import just those rows.
• You picked "I don't know" by mistake. It cannot be undone — that is what the card warns. Email us before you do anything else; we cannot reverse it, but we can help you get those people back through a signup form.
• "You can look, but not import." Your role cannot import. "Importing writes consent records that outlive whoever clicked. Ask an owner or admin."
• You want to build the file by hand. Add a provenance column with one of: consented, connector_bug, genuine_optout, unknown or hold. Rows marked consented also need consent_wording, consent_source and consent_date.

Still stuck? Email support@aminoengine.com — we answer within one business day.