Import Suppression Lists

To protect against accidentally adding invalid stale addresses to your audience, you can import contacts as unsubscribed to create a suppression list.

Each audience in your Mailchimp account is separate from the others, so your suppression list won't be global. You'll need to create a separate suppression list for each audience in your account.

In this article, you'll learn how to set up a suppression list from a CSV, TXT, or Excel file.

Before you start

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

• This suppression list process can't mark existing contacts as unsubscribed or cleaned. To mark existing subscribers as unsubscribed, use the bulk unsubscribe tool instead.
• Unsubscribed contacts count toward your monthly marketing plan limit if you created your account after May 15, 2019. To learn more about which contacts count toward your monthly plan limit, check out About Your Contacts.

Import a suppression list

To import a suppression list, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
   
2. Click Audience dashboard.
   
3. If you have more than one audience, click the Current 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 Upload File.
   
6. Click Continue to Upload.
   
7. Click Browse and choose the CSV file from your computer.
   
8. Click Continue to Organize.
   
9. Use the Select an audience drop-down to confirm the audience you want to import to.
10. Use the Select a status drop-down menu to choose Unsubscribed.
11. If your audience has groups, you can import your contacts directly into the group of your choice. Navigate to the Select 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.
12. If you want to update contacts that are already in your audience, check the box next to Update any existing contacts.
    
13. Click Continue to Tag.
    
14. If you want to assign tags to all of the contacts in your import, click the drop-down menu and choose or create tags as needed. You can also choose from popular tags.
    
15. When you're ready, click Continue to Match.
    
16. Match the columns in your import file to the fields in your Mailchimp audience. We'll automatically match some columns for you. For example, the column that contains email addresses will match the required Email Address field.
    
17. Click the column header to choose a different field type for the column or to create a new field. Repeat for all unmatched columns that you want to import. Any unmatched columns will not be imported.
    
18. Click Finalize Import to review your import settings.
    
19. If everything looks good, click Complete Import.
    

That's it! After the import is finished, we'll send a notification to the email address associated with your username.

To view your unsubscribed contacts at any time, create a new segment with these conditions: Email Marketing Status | is | Unsubscribed.