Help Center
Try for Free Login

Tips for people management

Import Data into Drip

In Drip the only requirement to create a person in our database is their email address. This is how we identify people in your account, and we won't add duplicate email addresses to your account. Any additional information regarding a person needs to be added by you, the Drip user. Person Profile Fields , Custom Fields, and Tags are datasets that allow you to understand, track, and manage the people on your list better.

 

Curate Your List for Import

If you have customer data stored on an email service platform you will need to export the data before closing your account. When you export your list, consider the following questions:

  • Do you have consent to send to this list?
  • Have you engaged with this list in the past 6 months?
  • Has your list been actively engaging with your emails in the past 6 months?

To help your emails reach inboxes, you need a healthy list full of people who want to hear from you. List imports are subject to approval.

Clean your list by running it through a service such as Neverbounce, BriteVerify, or Kickbox.

 

Format Your List

An example of a CSV header in the correct format for Drip.

To format your list, you will create a spreadsheet and save it as a comma-separated value (CSV) file (shown as a .csv file). You can use any of the following spreadsheet platforms to do this:

If your account was created after June 2, 2020, there is a limit of 200,000 rows per CSV upload. Other file types (non-CSV) will not be supported for importing data into Drip.

Format Profile Fields

Format your column headings in all lowercase with underscores to map them to the built-in profile fields:

  • email
  • first_name
  • last_name
  • phone
  • address1
  • address2
  • city
  • state
  • zip
  • country
  • lifetime_value
  • time_zone

Each column in your spreadsheet must contain an email address to append the data to. A new person will not be created in your account if there is no email address or a duplicate email address.

The time_zone field must be entered in Olson format (also known as “tz database”): America/Los_Angeles. Leave this field lowercase (time_zone) when importing your CSV file, but keep the value America/Los_Angeles with the appropriate capitalization.

The lifetime_value field must be entered in cents. So if a person’s LTV is $10, you'd convert that to cents and enter that in as 1000 instead of 10.00. Leave this field lowercase when importing your CSV.

All other cells or Profile Fields may remain empty. Profile Fields may contain spaces, numbers, and capital letters.

Format Tags

Tags are a way of attaching a label to a person once they have done something specific, like when someone becomes a customer. Not only do they help you better understand the way people interact with your marketing, but they also provide an intuitive way of segmenting your list.

Your column header must be formatted as follows: tags. If you format the column as Tags or tag, it will import the tags as a Custom Field. Each tags cell can contain one or more tags separated by a comma. If the cell is empty, a tag will not be applied to the person. Adding new tags will not replace existing tags in a person's profile.

Format Custom Fields

Custom field showing the property shirt_size and value small found in a person profile.

Custom Fields contain information that is unique to an individual person on your list, such as their shirt size. They're also how personalized details are added to emails with Liquid Code.

All custom fields are represented by an Identifier. The identifier name is static and is used to identify it from others in your account. Stored in the Identifier, is the information that is unique to a person.

When importing your list using a CSV file, each Custom Field must be its own column header. The column header will be formatted in Drip like this: custom_field_identifier.

For example, if you add the custom field of ‘shirt size’ in your CSV file like the image below:

CSV showing the header email and shirt_size with small, medium, and large on each row

Drip will automatically format this custom field to ‘shirt_size’ when imported into Drip as seen in the below image:

An example of the CSV when imported into Drip showing the same header email and shirt_size with small, medium, and large.

There is a limit of 1000 characters per field. There is no limit to the number of custom fields you can save per person.

Export to CSV

When your spreadsheet is correctly formatted, download or export it as a CSV file. Drip does not save hard copies of the CSV files you import and you should save a copy to your computer for your records.

 

Import Your List

Importing options when creating a bulk operation for CSV upload, Email list, or Segment.

To import your CSV file to Drip:

  1. Go to People > Active
  2. Click + Add People
  3. Under Upload a list of people click Begin
  4. Upload or drag and drop your CSV file. Once you upload your CSV, you'll see a preview of the first few rows
  5. The box to Treat the first row in your file as headers is turned ON by default.
  6. The option to Tag these people as “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” is turned ON by default.
  7. Click Next > Add these People
  8. Click Done to exit the page and view the progress of the operation, or click Cancel this Operation to cancel the operation

You have 30 seconds to cancel an operation once it’s been scheduled. After that, operations cannot be canceled or reversed.

You’ll be redirected to the Bulk Operations page where you can see the progress of your import. The operation will show as pending while we import your list, and once it’s completed it can be found under “Complete” bulk operations.

Locate the people you imported into your account by segmenting for the “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” tag on the People > Active page.

 

Email Preference

Push people into Drip with the correct email preference to ensure you’re respecting people’s marketing preferences. Unsubscribed people from one platform won’t automatically be marked as unsubscribed in another, so it’s important to keep track of subscribed versus unsubscribed people when importing your list to Drip.

You will want to perform two separate CSV file imports, one file for subscribed people and one file for unsubscribed people.

Import Subscribed People

Import your CSV file of subscribed people to Drip:

  1. Go to People > Active
  2. Click + Add People
  3. Under Upload a list of people click Begin
  4. Upload or drag and drop your CSV file. Once you upload your CSV, you'll see a preview of the first few rows
  5. The box to Treat the first row in your file as headers is turned ON by default.
  6. The option to Tag these people as “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” is turned ON by default.
  7. Click More Actions
  8. Apply an "Initial Upload" tag with the date for housekeeping purposes
  9. Click Next > Add these People
  10. Click Done to exit the page and view the progress of the operation, or click Cancel this Operation to cancel the operation

You have 30 seconds to cancel an operation once it’s been scheduled. After that, operations cannot be canceled or reversed.

You’ll be redirected to the Bulk Operations page where you can see the progress of your import. The operation will show as pending while we import your list, and once it’s completed can be found under Complete bulk operations.

Locate the subscribed people you just imported in your account under People > Active > Subscribed to marketing emails. From there, segment for the “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” tag that was applied on import.

Import Unsubscribed People

Import your CSV file of unsubscribed people to Drip:

  1. Go to People > Active
  2. Click + Add People
  3. Under Upload a list of people click Begin
  4. Upload or drag and drop your CSV file. Once you upload your CSV, you'll see a preview of the first few rows
  5. The box to Treat the first row in your file as headers is turned ON by default
  6. The option to Tag these people as “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” is turned ON by default
  7. Click More Actions
  8. Select Unsubscribe a person > All mailings
  9. Click Next > Add these People
  10. Click Done to exit the page and view the progress of the operation, or click Cancel this Operation to cancel the operation

You have 30 seconds to cancel an operation once it’s been scheduled. After that, operations cannot be canceled or reversed.

You’ll be redirected to the Bulk Operations page where you can see the progress of your import. The operation will show as pending while we import your list, and once it’s completed can be found under Complete bulk operations.

Locate the unsubscribed people you just imported under People > Active > People unsubscribed from email marketing. From there, segment for the “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” tag that was applied on import.

 

View the People You’ve Imported

To view the people you’ve imported into your account, click the People > Active tab. From there, locate the people you imported into your account by segmenting for the “Imported YY-DD-MM at HH-MM-SS” tag that is automatically applied upon import.