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How to Migrate Your Email Subscribers (Indie Email - Legacy)
How to Migrate Your Email Subscribers (Indie Email - Legacy)

Check how to import your email list to Indie Email!

Updated today

To start this migration you'll first need your subscribers in a .csv file format. If coming from MailChimp, follow these instructions. Only export subscribed contacts, not unsubscribed, non-subscribed, or cleaned.

In Indie Email, navigate to the Contacts tab and click “Import” in the upper right corner.

🔴 Before start, please make sure that:

  • Your file is in .csv format

  • Each contact in your file have an email address

Let's start!

On your Indie Email:

  1. Click "Contacts" located on the left menu.

  2. Click the "Import" button.

  3. Click the "Import from File" button.

  4. A file browser will appear. Navigate to the file you wish to import and select it.

  5. Your file will process, and you will be redirected to the import screen. Map the columns in your file to fields in your account by clicking the dropdown for each field.

    • If you don't wish to import data from a column, select "Do Not Import this Field"

    • To create a new field directly from the import page, click "[Add New Field]" and follow the prompts

    • The “Field Values” column will show the first row of data from your CSV so you can confirm your mapping.

    • “This is a duplicate field” error will show if the same field is mapped twice. You can fix this by selecting different destinations for every mapped field.

  6. Select Lists: Main List. Do not upload any contacts to the Transactional list.

  7. Add Tags (Optional): Type the tags you wish to apply to all contacts once they're imported.

    • If you are migrating from MailChimp, tags can be migrate and segments will need to be rebuilt over time in Indie Email.

  8. Under Import Options / Advanced Options:

    • Leave the default setting for Webhooks

    • Uncheck “Trigger Automations”

    • Uncheck “Create field options when importing new custom field values”

Adding subscribers to groups

Once the upload has completed, go into the contact list for your Main List and click the “Edit all” button. From the window that pops up, choose “Update a field” then the “We’d love to stay in touch with you…” field. Check off the Newsletter and Fundraising checkboxes (or any other newsletters you might have). Click “Apply” and confirm the action.

Mapping subscribers with Stripe data

You can map your recently imported contact list with Stripe data. For that, you need to edit the “Recurring Supporter Status” custom field.

  1. Go into your Stripe account and download the list of their active subscriptions

    • These should be the current monthly and yearly donors

  2. Open the downloaded file as a Google Sheets and ensure you have a column with the email addresses of the donors, and create two more columns: Supporter Status, and Recurring Supporter Status. These should both be “Active” for every donor.

  3. On Google Sheets, go to File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv)

  4. With this list of emails as a .csv file, do another upload to Indie Email.

  5. Now, map the email field, the Supporter Status field, and Recurring Supporter Status field—again, both should be Active— and select the Transactional List

  6. Also add the Recurring Supporter tag

  7. Under Import Options / Advanced Options:

    • Tick the box to update existing contacts

    • Uncheck “Webhooks”

    • Uncheck “Trigger Automations”

    • Uncheck “Create field options when importing new custom field values”

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