Summary
Importing email contacts requires careful planning to maintain a healthy sender reputation and ensure high deliverability rates. The primary goal is to avoid sending to invalid or unconsented addresses, which can lead to high bounce rates, spam complaints, and even blacklisting. Effective contact import strategies prioritize data accuracy, consent verification, and ongoing list hygiene, minimizing the risk of deliverability issues. This often involves more than just collecting email addresses; it extends to understanding where the data originated and implementing measures to clean and validate lists before sending.
Key findings
- Email address as mandatory field: The email address is universally considered the sole mandatory field for any contact import, serving as the unique identifier.
- Consent verification: While consent history may not be a required field in the data itself, ensuring that all imported contacts have provided explicit consent is crucial for compliance and deliverability. This certification is often handled at the contractual level with the client.
- List hygiene importance: Many imported lists suffer from poor hygiene, containing dead domains, typos, and inactive users, leading to high bounce rates and potential spam issues. Proactive cleaning and validation are essential.
- Post-import management: Bounce management systems typically handle dead domains post-send, but pre-import checks can give an indication of overall list quality. For more information on how email verification can reduce bounces, see our guide on best practices for email verification and reducing bounces.
- Supplementary data fields: Additional fields like language, quality rating, or segmentation data can be highly beneficial for targeted marketing, depending on the list's intended use.
Key considerations
- Data preparation: Before importing, ensure your file adheres to formatting guidelines, such as having a single header row and proper column names. Mailchimp provides detailed guidelines for import file formatting, emphasizing the need for an email address column and one email per contact.
- Pre-import validation: Actively cleaning and validating lists before import helps prevent unintended spamming, reduces hard bounces, and protects sender reputation. Consider using tools for email database cleansing and verification.
- Communication with clients: Educate clients on the importance of opt-in lists, good list hygiene, and the risks of sending to unverified contacts, especially in regions with lax anti-spam laws.
- Deduplication: Systems typically deduplicate contacts based on their email address, so ensure each entry is unique to avoid redundancy and potential issues during import.
What email marketers say
Email marketers frequently encounter challenges when importing contact lists, particularly concerning data quality and recipient consent. Many users, even from large companies, may lack comprehensive understanding of email deliverability best practices, leading to unintentional spamming. The friction often arises between the sales teams, who prioritize closing deals, and deliverability teams, who must safeguard sender reputation. Marketers stress the need for clear communication, pre-import validation, and robust internal policies to ensure list hygiene and compliance, which ultimately impacts the success of email campaigns and the standing of the email service provider (ESP).
Key opinions
- Unintentional spamming: Many users unknowingly send spam by importing unverified lists, leading to issues like high bounce rates and complaints.
- Importance of consent certification: Marketers emphasize asking clients to certify that everyone on an imported list has given consent for communication.
- Value of validation services: Running lists through email validation services is highly recommended to clean out invalid or risky addresses before sending. For a deeper dive into tools that can help, refer to our page on email address validation and avoiding spam traps.
- Custom fields for segmentation: Adding fields like language, consent history details, or a quality rating can greatly enhance segmentation capabilities for more effective marketing.
- Managing imported lists from previous ESPs: Clients often migrate lists from old ESPs, believing them to be clean, but these lists frequently lack proper suppression of bounces or unsubscribes, requiring immediate attention. This is particularly relevant when considering best practices for using an existing email list.
Key considerations
- Internal friction: There's often a conflict between sales goals and deliverability team's need to protect the network, necessitating internal alignment and clear policies.
- Proactive list vetting: Consider implementing pre-contract list checks for larger clients and developing suspicious filters to block uploads with known issues like typos or dead domains.
- Client education: Regularly educate clients on the detrimental effects of poor list hygiene on deliverability and sender reputation, stressing the importance of opt-in lists.
- Tracking key indicators: Build dashboards to monitor bounces, complaints, and other metrics to guide customer behavior. HubSpot's community offers useful tips for importing contacts and companies, including understanding unique identifiers.
Marketer view
An Email Marketer from Email Geeks highlights that many users unintentionally send spam by importing unverified lists. They suggest pre-cleaning domains lacking MX or DNS records, removing known hard bounces using a suppression list, and eliminating role-based emails and inactive contacts from the last six months.
Marketer view
An Email Marketer from Email Geeks points out that in some regions, like Argentina, there are no strict anti-spam laws, leading users to be unaware of the severe penalties associated with unsolicited email. This lack of legal framework contributes to unintentional spamming.
What the experts say
Experts emphasize that while the email address is the only strictly mandatory field, the underlying quality of the data is paramount. They warn against the dangers of importing lists without proper consent and highlight that relying solely on post-send bounce management is insufficient for truly poor lists. Instead, they advocate for proactive measures such as initial list quality assessments and the use of sandbox environments for new senders to protect deliverability and sender reputation. The expert consensus leans towards rigorous pre-import checks and continuous monitoring to prevent issues that can lead to being flagged by ISPs and ultimately impact inbox placement.
Key opinions
- Email is the only must-have field: The email address is the sole truly mandatory field for contact imports, with consent being a contractual matter.
- Risks of unpermissioned lists: Sending to addresses without permission is considered playing with fire, necessitating an audit state or a never mail this flag.
- Bounce management vs. pre-cleaning: While bounce management handles dead domains post-send, counting these domains pre-import provides a critical measure of list quality, indicating whether the list should be mailed at all. Understanding why emails go to spam often starts with list hygiene.
- Sandbox environments: New customers should start in a sandbox with limited sending rates and volumes to monitor metrics before moving to a better IP pool, ensuring list quality based on complaints and bounces.
- Former ESP responsibility: It's crucial to remind clients to request full suppression data (unsubscribes, hard bounces, complaints) from their previous ESPs when migrating lists to avoid importing problematic contacts, as a clean list helps avoid spam traps.
Key considerations
- Data's existing state: Import requirements are often shaped by how clients already possess and manage their data, meaning flexibility is key.
- List quality assessment: Implement initial assessments of list quality upon import to gauge potential risks and inform subsequent sending strategies.
- Continuous monitoring: Even after import, closely monitor deliverability metrics such as bounces and complaints to identify and address issues promptly. ActiveCampaign's guidelines highlight proper formatting, including date fields, which can impact data integrity and subsequent analysis.
- Client communication for suppression: Encourage customers to export and include opt-out, complaint, and bounce data from their previous ESPs to ensure their lists are truly updated upon migration.
Expert view
An Expert from Email Geeks states that the email address is the fundamental required field. They add that explicit consent data within the list itself is not strictly necessary if the client has already contractually certified that all recipients have provided consent.
Expert view
An Expert from Spamresource warns that poor list hygiene, including the retention of inactive or invalid email addresses, significantly increases the risk of hitting spam traps, which can severely damage sender reputation and deliverability.
What the documentation says
Official documentation from various email service providers and platforms consistently outlines the fundamental requirements and best practices for importing email contacts. These guidelines primarily focus on file formatting, the absolute necessity of the email address field, and methods for deduplication. While they might not delve deeply into the nuances of deliverability and sender reputation, they provide the technical groundwork for a successful import. Adhering to these documented standards is the first step in ensuring that your contact data is correctly processed and integrated into your marketing system.
Key findings
- Email address is mandatory: Across all platforms, the email address is the single required column, serving as the unique identifier for each contact.
- File format requirements: CSV (Comma Separated Values) is the most commonly accepted file format for bulk imports. Some platforms also support direct copy-pasting from spreadsheets or imports from connected apps.
Key considerations
- Header row: The first row of your import file must be a header row, with clear and recognizable column names (e.g., First Name, Email). This ensures correct mapping of data fields.
- One email per contact: Each row should represent a single contact with one email address to prevent errors during import and deduplication.
- Data formatting: Pay close attention to specific field formatting, such as dates (e.g., YYYY-MM-DD), to avoid import errors. Proper email validation on sign-up can help prevent these issues from the start.
- Leverage multiple fields: While only email is mandatory, using additional fields like first name, last name, and custom tags allows for more sophisticated segmentation and personalization, enhancing overall email deliverability and avoiding spam filters.
Technical article
Documentation from Mailchimp specifies that an import file must contain an email address column, and each contact should have only one email address for successful import.
Technical article
Documentation from Presspage Knowledge Base states that the email address acts as a unique identifier for contacts and that the first row of any import file must be a header row, correctly labeling columns.
Related resources
12 resources
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