Importing an audience safely

An audience import is the moment your sending reputation is most at risk. A file that looks fine can contain duplicates, old unsubscribes, addresses that bounced last year and the occasional person who marked a previous message as spam. Sending to those addresses hurts every future campaign. Inbrovia checks the file before anything is added and shows you what it found, so you can import with confidence.

Preparing the file

Inbrovia accepts CSV files and spreadsheets, or you can paste a list of addresses. The first row should contain column headings. One column must contain email addresses; the rest are optional and become recipient fields you can use for personalization and segments.

• Use one row per person. If a cell contains two addresses, split them.
• Keep names in separate columns where possible: first name and last name rather than one full name.
• Custom fields such as plan, country or customer type should be consistent. Pro and pro are treated as different values when you build segments.
• Remove anyone who did not agree to hear from your brand. Inbrovia's sending policy is permission based, and an audience of people who asked to hear from you performs better anyway.

Mapping columns

After upload, Inbrovia shows the headings it found and suggests a mapping to recipient fields. Confirm the email column and map names, company and tags. Any heading you do not map becomes a custom field automatically, available as a variable in campaigns. Mappings are remembered, so the second import from the same system is quicker.

Reading the quality report

Before the import runs, Inbrovia produces a quality report. It counts every row by outcome and lets you inspect each group. This is the most important screen in the process. Take a minute with it.

• Valid: rows that will be imported as active recipients.
• Duplicates: addresses that appear more than once in the file or already exist in the audience. Only one copy is kept. Capitalisation and surrounding spaces are ignored when comparing.
• Unsubscribed: addresses that previously unsubscribed from this brand. They are not imported into campaigns, however they appear in the file.
• Complained: addresses that marked a previous campaign as spam. They are never contacted again by this brand.
• Bounced: addresses that hard bounced before. Sending to them again damages your reputation, so they stay excluded.
• Malformed: rows whose email column is not a valid address. Fix them in the file if they matter.

Why excluded means excluded

It is tempting to think of a fresh export from a CRM as the source of truth. For sending, it is not. Someone who unsubscribed told you something, and mailbox providers remember whether you listened. Inbrovia keeps suppression attached to the address rather than the list, so a reimport, a duplicate or a new segment can never bring a suppressed address back into a campaign. You will see the excluded groups in the report, and you can inspect them, but they will not receive mail.

Confirming the import

When the report looks right, confirm. Recipients are created with the source set to the import, so you can always see where someone came from. Tags you mapped are applied, and you can add an import-wide tag to find this group later. The import appears in the audience history with its full report, which is useful if a colleague asks why a number changed.

After the import

Check Audience Health for the brand. A high invalid or bounced share in an import is an early sign that the source list is stale. If you plan to send to the new group immediately, consider a smaller first campaign and watch the results; Campaign Guardian will warn you if the volume is unusual compared with your history. Finally, make sure your campaign includes a clear reason the recipient is hearing from you. Recognition is the best protection against complaints.