Import your audience

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 every row before anything is added and shows you what it found, so you import knowing exactly who will receive mail.

To start, go to Audience, then Imports, and select Import audience. You need permission to import audiences in the workspace. The import has four steps: Upload, Map columns, Quality check and Import. Nothing is added to your audience until the last one.

Step 1: upload a file or paste addresses

Choose Upload CSV / XLSX or Paste addresses.

• Files: CSV (also .tsv and .txt) or Excel (.xlsx or .xls), with column names in the first row and up to 100,000 rows per file.
• Pasted addresses: one per line or comma separated. "Name <email>" works too, and so does CSV with a header row.

If you are building a file from scratch, use Download Excel template or Download CSV template. Only the Email column is required. The template includes two example rows on example.com; delete them, although they are skipped automatically if you forget. Then select Analyze.

A few habits make the rest of the import smoother:

• Use one row per person. If a cell contains two addresses, split them.
• Keep first and last names in separate columns where you can. A single full-name column is split at the first space.
• Separate several tags with a semicolon (vip;newsletter) and write dates as YYYY-MM-DD.
• Keep custom values consistent. Segment rules ignore capitalization, so Pro and pro match, but Pro and Pro plan do not.
• Only include people who agreed to hear from your brand.

Step 2: map columns

Inbrovia lists each column in the file with sample values and suggests what to import it as, with a High, Medium or Low confidence badge. Standard fields include Email, First Name, Last Name, Full Name, Company, Phone, Country, City, Plan, Tags, Customer Type and Date. A column Inbrovia does not recognize is suggested as a custom field, which you can rename. Choose Do not import for anything you want to leave out.

One column must be mapped to Email. Custom fields become variables you can use for personalization and segments. Then select Run quality check.

Step 3: read the quality report

Every row is checked against your brand's existing recipients and suppression list. This is the most important screen in the process, so take a minute with it.

When comparing addresses, Inbrovia ignores capitalization and surrounding spaces, ignores +tags (so jane+news@company.com matches jane@company.com), and for Gmail addresses also ignores dots before the @.

Select a count to see the rows behind it, or Inspect every row to open the full import record with the reason for each outcome. If the numbers look wrong, go back and check the mapping before you continue.

Why excluded means excluded

A fresh export from a CRM can feel like the source of truth. For sending, it is not. Someone who unsubscribed told you something, and mailbox providers notice whether you listened. Inbrovia keeps suppression attached to the address rather than to a list, so a re-import, a duplicate or a new segment can never bring a suppressed address back into a campaign. You can inspect the excluded groups, but they will not receive mail.

Step 4: import

Select the Import button, which shows how many recipients will be imported. When it finishes, you see three numbers:

• New recipients: people added for the first time. Each one records this import as its source.
• Existing recipients refreshed: active recipients whose names, company, tags and custom fields were updated from the file. Custom fields that are not in this file are kept.
• Left unchanged: unsubscribed, bounced or suppressed recipients, whose status is preserved.

From there you can View recipients, Create a campaign for this import or Inspect import. Every import stays under Audience, then Imports, with its full report, which helps when a colleague asks why a number changed.

After the import

A high share of invalid addresses is an early sign that the source list is stale, and invalid rows in recent imports lower the Audience Quality factor of your Sender Health score. When you build a campaign for the new group, Campaign Guardian warns you if more than 30% of the selected audience is excluded. Make sure the campaign explains why the recipient is hearing from you, since recognition is the best protection against complaints. For how suppression works across brands, see audience management.