Combine Audiences From a CSV File

Combine audiences to simplify audience management and help reduce the cost of your monthly plan by eliminating duplicate contacts. To combine an exported or saved contact audience into another Mailchimp audience, import a CSV.

In this article, you'll learn how to combine audiences with an import.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• We recommend you backup all of your audiences before you combine them. Keeping a backup is a safeguard and allows you to retain as much data as possible, although some data cannot be exported and will be lost. For this reason, we don't recommend you combine GDPR-enabled audiences. To learn more about what your backup export will and will not include, check out View or Export Your Contacts.
• To prevent duplicate contacts in your audience, you may want to archive contacts in your old audience after you've exported and before you import to your main audience.

Task roadmap

This is a multi-step process. You'll need to perform these steps in sequence to complete the task.

• Decide which of your Mailchimp audiences you want to use as your main audience.
• Export the audience you want to combine with your main audience.
• Archive the contacts before importing them to your main audience.
• Import contacts to your main audience.

Export

To combine a Mailchimp audience with another audience, first export and download the audience you want to merge with your main audience. We'll automatically keep your audience’s subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, and cleaned addresses in separate files, which you'll need later in this process.

Import to your main audience

To import your exported contacts to your main audience, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Audience dashboard.
   
3. If you have more than one audience, click the Audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
4. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Import contacts.
5. Choose CSV or tab-delimited text file.
   
   If your last import was a CSV with the same columns, you can click Use settings from last import, which will allow you to skip steps 8-10.
6. Click Continue To Setup.
   
7. Click Browse and choose the file from your computer.
   
8. Click Continue To Match to go to the next step and match the columns in your import file to the fields in your Mailchimp audience.
   
   If your import file contains only an email column, we’ll skip you to Organize (step 13).
9. We’ll automatically match some columns in your import file. For example, the column that contains email addresses will match the required Email Address field.
   
10. Click Edit to choose a different field type from the drop-down menu. To create a new field, click the drop-down menu and choose Create a new field.
11. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for all unmatched columns. You must match or skip all columns to complete your import.
    
12. After you're finished matching, we'll display a success message.
    
13. Click Continue To Organize.
    
14. Optional: If you want to assign tags to all of your imported contacts, click the plus (+) icon in the Tag all contacts section and choose or create tags as needed. This is a good way to identify contacts who were combined from another audience.
    
15. Optional: If you want to add your imported contacts to groups, navigate to the Add contacts to groups section and check the box next to each group that applies.
    
    You’ll only see this option if you have groups in your audience.
16. In the Choose status of these contacts section, click the drop-down menu to choose the type of contacts you’re about to import.
    
    The available statuses for contacts are:
    • Subscribed
    • Unsubscribed
    • Non-subscribed
    • Cleaned
17. In the Update existing contacts section, leave the box unchecked unless your import includes contacts who are already in your main audience.
    
18. Click Continue To Review to confirm your import settings
    
19. Click Import.
    

After the import is finished, we'll send a notification to the email address associated with your username. Repeat this process for each type of contact you want to import.

Next steps

After you've combined your audiences, make sure any signup form URLs, and pop-up, embedded, or hosted forms on your websites or social networks to match your new main audience.