How do I move my email list to a new tool?#
- Export everything from the old tool, including the status column, and keep the file somewhere you will still have it next month.
- Read your own header row out loud and decide which of those columns the new importer will understand. The address column is the easy part.
- Import into the new tool without sending anything, and let it map the statuses so an unsubscribed name arrives as unsubscribed.
- Check the counts against the export before you mail a single person: total, active, unsubscribed, pending.
- Warm the new sending setup with the engaged part of the list first, then bring the rest across.
- Leave the old account running until one full send has gone from the new one without a surprise.
The step people skip is the fourth. A migration that quietly turned 300 unsubscribes into 300 mailable contacts looks fine on the dashboard until the first campaign, and then it looks like a complaint rate.
Can you transfer contacts from one email account to another?#
That question means two different things depending on which kind of contacts you hold, and the answers are worth separating.
A personal address book in Gmail or Outlook moves as a file: export it from one account, import it into the other, and the entries land with their names and numbers. The mail provider's own help page has the current menu names, which change more often than the format does.
A marketing list is a different object. It is not a set of names you can paste into another account, because it carries a subscription status, a history of who confirmed, and in most jurisdictions a legal basis for mailing. Moving that means an export, an import that honours the status column, and a new home for the consent evidence.
What should I export from the old tool?#
| What you take | Why it matters on the way in | Where it goes missing |
|---|---|---|
| The addresses | The obvious one, and the only column some senders export | Nowhere, this part is easy |
| The status column | Subscribed, unsubscribed and pending have to arrive as themselves | A tool that exports only the active audience |
| Signup date | The age of a relationship, and the only honest way to build a quiet segment | Dropped by exports that flatten custom fields |
| Tags, labels or segments | What the reader asked for, which is the reason they joined | Stored as a separate object that the CSV will not carry |
| Consent evidence | Who said yes, when, from what source, and through which form | Almost everywhere, because most tools do not export it |
| Custom fields | The two or three that your emails merge | Silently truncated to the standard columns |
| The automations | Nobody imports a sequence, so the text has to be copied by hand | The thing that makes people postpone the move |
| The suppression list | The bounced and complained addresses that must stay unmailed | Treated as an internal detail rather than part of the list |
Which columns does a new importer need?#
One that works: the address, the status, the signup date, the tags, and the first name. Anything else is a custom field you can add afterwards, and a migration is the wrong week to discover what your new tool does with unusual column names.
A good importer is generous about header names rather than demanding a template. The practical test is to look at whether it recognises what your old tool called them: Email Address or email, FNAME or First Name, Tags or Labels or Segments, Status or Member Status or Subscription Status, Signup Date or optin_date. A tool that makes you rename columns by hand will get them wrong.
The other test is what it does with a row it cannot read. A per-row warning that names the bad line lets you fix ten addresses. A file rejected wholesale means the migration becomes an afternoon, and afternoons are where senders give up and import the cheap way.
Do unsubscribed addresses have to come with me?#
They have to arrive as unsubscribed, which is the same thing said more precisely. The people who opted out are the reason you can prove an opt-out works, and a new tool that cannot represent them is a tool that will mail them.
A record that is impossible to import is a real risk. Some senders export only the active audience because the CSV is tidier, and then the unsubscribed names are gone from the system of record entirely. Next year somebody re-enters those addresses from an old spreadsheet and the complaint arrives with a date stamp.
Can I import a list without asking people to confirm again?#
You can, provided the new tool honours the status you imported rather than treating every row as a fresh signup. The distinction that matters is between a list that already confirmed, which is the same relationship in a new building, and a list of addresses typed into a form by nobody in particular, which is not a relationship at all.
A cautious setup treats imported addresses as unconfirmed and gives them a one-time email asking whether they want to stay, with silence meaning they stop being mailed. That costs you part of the list and buys you a record for everybody left. It is the right trade when the file came from an old spreadsheet, and the wrong one when every name joined through a double opt-in form last month. What double opt-in is is the background.
What happens to my tags and segments?#
Tags usually travel as a column of comma-separated values. Segments usually do not, because a segment is a rule rather than a fact about a person, and rules have to be rebuilt in the new tool's language.
That is a small piece of good news. Segmenting an email list is writing the questions down, and a migration forces you to look at the six rules you use rather than the nineteen you accumulated.
What happens to my automations?#
Nothing, because nobody imports a sequence. Copy the subject and the body of each step into a document, note the delay in hours next to it, and rebuild them by hand in the new place.
Rebuilding is the moment to shorten the series rather than transplant it, since an automation that has been running for two years accumulates steps nobody wrote on purpose. What an autoresponder is covers what to look for when you check the old ones.
What usually breaks in a list migration?#
| The failure | How you see it | The check that catches it |
|---|---|---|
| Unsubscribes imported as subscribers | A complaint on the first campaign | Compare the exported status counts with the new tool's |
| Tags dropped or truncated | A segment that now matches nobody | Pick three tagged names and look them up by hand |
| Names merged into one audience | Two brands mailing one list | Count the audience before and after against the file |
| Consent history left behind | No answer when a provider asks how they joined | Download the proof you have before the old account closes |
| Suppressed addresses re-entered | Bounces climbing from the first send | Send to a small slice and read the bounce report |
| Automation copied badly | A welcome that fires on an imported name | Turn the sequence off before the import, then on after |
How do I check the import worked?#
Four numbers and three names. The numbers are the total, the active count, the unsubscribed count and the pending count, each read from the exported file and then from the new tool. They should agree, and a difference is a mapping problem you want found today rather than in a complaint next week.
The names are one unsubscribed address, one address carrying two tags, and one with a signup date older than a year. Look all three up and see whether what you can see about them matches what the file said. That is a five-minute test and it catches most of the table above.
Should I move the whole list or only the readers?#
Move everything you can prove, then decide who to mail. A list where the quiet half is deleted rather than segmented loses the only honest measure you have of your reach, and a list where the quiet half is mailed anyway costs you the ratio that protects the engaged part. How to clean an email list is the same decision made with the file already in front of you.
The pattern that works is an import of all of it, a re-permission email to the names that have been silent for a year, and a first month of sending that is deliberately smaller than you are capable of.
How long should both tools run at once?#
Long enough for one full send from the new place, read on a phone, with the report checked. In practice that is one to three weeks, and the point of the overlap is not the second tool, it is the file: an old account that is still open is a backup.
Send from one of them, never both. Two tools mailing the same address on the same week is the fastest way to make a loyal reader unsubscribe, and it happens more often than anyone admits because an old campaign still sitting in a queue counts as a plan.
Do I have to close the old account?#
No, and closing it is the least urgent part of the job. Keep the export, keep the account until the new sending is proven, then close it on your own schedule rather than the renewal date's. Some tools bill stored contacts, in which case a duplicated list is a real cost and the deadline becomes a date on a calendar.
Before anything closes, download the record of how people joined. After the account goes, that evidence is a support ticket at a company that has no obligation to answer it. What email marketing costs covers which tools charge for stored names and therefore make the overlap expensive.
What is the legal part of moving a list?#
The obligation travels with the addresses, not with the software. Whoever holds a list has to be able to say how a person joined, honour an unsubscribe in both systems during the overlap, and stop mailing anyone with no basis. The specifics depend on where you and your readers are, and a page written by a newsletter tool is not legal advice.
What a tool can do is make the record: keep the source and the time of each confirmation, refuse to mail an address that has no proof behind it, and give the whole thing back to you as a file when you ask. That file is what makes the next migration easier than this one.
How do I move a list out of Campaign Kicker?#
The consent record downloads as a CSV from the contacts screen whenever you want it, with the action, the source, the time and the address it belongs to. There is no self-serve button to export the contact rows yet, so that one comes from us: write to hello@campaignkicker.com and we will send the list.
On the way in, our importer reads the shape a Mailchimp audience export produces, including the alternatives it meets in the wild (email or Email Address, FNAME or First Name, Tags or Labels or Segments, Status or Subscription Status, Signup Date or optin_date), carries the status column so unsubscribed stays unsubscribed, holds anything unconfirmed out of every send until it clicks the one-time confirm email, and skips a row it cannot read with a warning rather than failing the file. Nothing imports at all until you tick the declaration saying how those addresses were collected.
Bring the list across with the status intact. Campaign Kicker reads a Mailchimp-shaped CSV, keeps unconfirmed addresses out of every send until they say yes again, requires a consent declaration before anything imports, and lets you download the consent record any time. The free plan mails 5,000 emails a month with no cap on stored names and no card.
Import the list