Add Subscribed Contacts to Groups

When you create groups in your audience, subscribed contacts can categorize themselves based on common interests or preferences. Sometimes, you may want to move subscribed contacts into groups yourself. You can then use group data to send targeted emails.

In this article, you'll learn how to add subscribed contacts to groups.

Before you start

• Make sure you understand how groups work in Mailchimp. To learn more, check out Getting Started with Groups.
• Groups work best if you need your subscribed contacts to self-categorize when they sign up for your emails or update their contact profiles. For internal audience organization, consider using tags instead.
• If you import a subscribed contact who’s already in your audience, you’ll have the option to update their group selections. The new import will overwrite existing information for that subscribed contact, but will not remove them from any groups they are already a member of.

Add an individual subscribed contact to a group

To add an individual subscribed contact to one or more groups, follow these steps.

1. Click the Search Mailchimp field.
   
2. Enter the contact’s name or email address, then click the search icon.
3. Click the contact you want to work with.
4. In the Groups section of the contact’s profile, click Edit Groups.
5. In the Edit Groups pop-up modal, choose the groups you want to add the contact to, then click Save.

Nice job. After you add your subscribed contact to 1 or more groups, you’ll be able to see these group selections in the contact table.

Add multiple subscribed contacts to a group

Pick and choose multiple subscribed contacts to add to a group, or add an entire segment of subscribed contacts to a group at once.

Select and add

To select multiple subscribed contacts and add them to a group, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Check the box next to each subscribed contact you want to move into a specific group.
4. Click Group contacts.
5. In the Groups pop-up modal, search for the group you want to work with.
6. Click the group category, then click the group name(s) you want to add your subscribers to. The Add to group option is automatically selected in the Choose action drop-down.
7. When you’re ready, click Apply.

After you click Apply, you’ll be able to see your group selections in the contact table.

Add a segment to a group

To add members of a segment to a specific group, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click View segments, then choose the segment you want to work with.
4. Click the arrow icon, then choose Select visible.
   
   Depending on the segment size, you may need to click the next arrow and repeat this step until all contacts in the segment are selected.
5. In the Groups pop-up modal, search for the group you want to work with.
6. Click the group category, then click the group name(s) you want to add your subscribers to. The Add to group option is automatically selected in the Choose action drop-down.
7. When you’re ready, click Apply.

After you click Apply, you’ll be able to see your group selections in the contact table.

Import subscribed contacts to groups

Import new subscribed contacts into groups, or use our import tool to update group data for existing subscribed contacts. There are a couple different ways to import subscribed contacts to groups, depending on whether you want to import everyone in your file to the same group, or to different groups.

Import to the same group

To import subscribed contacts to the same group, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click All contacts.
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the Manage audience drop-down and choose Groups.
   
4. Find the group category you want to work with and click View Groups.
5. Find the group name you want to import subscribed contacts into, and click Import.
6. Follow the steps to import your contacts.

After you finish your import, we'll display a progress status message and email you when your import is complete. Once imported, your contacts will be added to the group you chose.

Import to different groups

To import subscribed contacts to different groups in your audience, follow these steps.

1. Before you import, open the spreadsheet file containing the contacts you’d like to add to Mailchimp.
2. Create a new column for each group category, exactly as it appears in your Mailchimp audience.
   
3. In the cells under each group category, enter the group names for each subscribed contact. To add a subscribed contact to multiple groups, separate the group names with a comma.
   
4. When you're done, import your contacts.
5. On the Match step, make sure the group column in your file is matched to the group column in your audience. We’ll handle the rest.