The import contacts tool allows you to manually add individuals or customer lists to a segment. A static segment can be included in a campaign’s target audience or used to exclude its contacts. Enrollment depends on the campaign’s included and excluded segments; an excluded segment takes priority. Below are use cases for the import contacts tool:
Retargeting your website visitors
Re-engaging your past customers or one-time customers
Adding a hand-picked list of affiliates as a target audience
Creating a list of specific contacts to exclude from a campaign
Using Klaviyo? This article includes steps on how to invite customers to your referral program in the ReferralCandy web app or Shopify app. If you wish to send the invite via Klaviyo, follow this article instead.
Step 1: Choose or create a segment
Imported contacts are added to a static segment. You can add new contacts or use an existing contact’s exact email address to add that contact to the segment.
Go to Contacts > Segments in the ReferralCandy web app or Shopify app.
To use an existing static segment, open it and click Edit segment. To create one, click Create new Segment, choose Static, click Create, enter its name, and save.
Open Import contacts and choose Import from Mailchimp, Upload a CSV, or Add customer by Email.
Note: Imported contacts can also match dynamic segments, including the prebuilt All Customers segment. If you are creating an exclusion list, follow the campaign-exclusion steps instead of adding this segment under Target these segments.
Step 2: Upload or import contacts
There are 3 import methods available when adding contacts to a static segment. You can use multiple methods together when importing.
A. Import from Mailchimp
A. Import from Mailchimp
This lets you import a customer list from Mailchimp. If your Mailchimp account is not yet connected to ReferralCandy, log in to Mailchimp first.
Select Import from Mailchimp from the dropdown menu.
Check the customer list(s) you want to add to the segment.
Click Add list.
B. Upload a CSV
B. Upload a CSV
Prepare a CSV file of your customers and upload to the static segment.
Check the file before you upload it:
Every row has a valid email address — no typos, no missing @ symbol, and no stray spaces before or after the address. A single malformed address can stop the whole import, so it's worth a quick scan.
No duplicate email addresses.
If you are importing contacts to invite them to your program, make sure they agreed to hear from you. Imported contacts may qualify for campaigns through other segments too, and enrollment can send a welcome email if it is enabled.
Select Upload a CSV from the dropdown menu.
Add CSV file button to upload the file from your device, or use the drag-and-drop method. Download a sample CSV file here.
Once the file is uploaded, click Add Customers. The CSV file should have the following column headers:
first_name or First Name
last_name or Last Name
email or Email
locale (optional)
If you're using multi-language, use the locale column to make sure customers receive notifications in the correct language.
C. Add customer by email
C. Add customer by email
Add individual customers to a static segment. Use the existing contact’s exact email address and current name when adding someone already in your account.
Click Add customer by email from the dropdown menu.
Fill out the email, name and locale fields, including all fields marked as required.
Click Add customer.
Import queue
After the contacts are selected, they are queued for review and importing. You can remove a contact or list from this import queue by clicking the trash bin icon under Actions. This removes the queued import, not an existing customer record. Once you're good with the queue, click Import.
A popup message appears with information on how you can enroll your imported contacts in your campaign. Review the message and confirm the import.
While an import is processing, Upload a CSV is unavailable and shows Import in progress. This applies across your whole account, not only the segment you're importing into, so you won't be able to start another CSV upload elsewhere until the current one finishes. Most imports are done within a few minutes — a longer list takes more time, and the first batch of contacts is checked before the rest of the list is processed.
Still showing "Import in progress"? Refresh the page and watch the number of imported contacts. If it's going up, the import is working through your list — and a short pause while the first batch is checked is normal too. Most imports finish within a few minutes: a short list still running well past that is worth flagging, without waiting for an hour. If a larger import's count hasn't moved for an hour, waiting longer won't fix it. Either way, send us the segment name and roughly when you started the import, and we'll check it from our side.
Step 3: Include or exclude the segment in a campaign
To invite these contacts to a live campaign, select the static segment under Target these segments in that campaign’s Target audience settings. Contacts in any excluded segment remain excluded, even if they also belong to this included segment.
To keep these contacts out of a campaign instead, select the static segment under Exclude these segments (optional) and save. Keep the campaign’s existing included audiences selected. Follow the steps for excluding one person or a few people.
Newly enrolled contacts receive the welcome email if it is enabled. On a longer list, enrollment and emails can happen as contacts finish importing rather than after the entire import completes. Importing can also qualify contacts through other segments, so review your campaign audiences before importing.