How do I Import Newsletter Emails Via CSV?

Your Shift4Shop store comes with a newsletter function that allows you to send marketing emails to your store's subscribers directly from the Online Store Manager. To subscribe to your mailing list, your site visitors and shoppers can enter their email address directly on your store pages or during their checkout process. You can also add subscribers manually as the need arises.

However, if you are moving your business over from a different eCommerce provider, you might have an already established list of newsletter subscribers and you need to import them to the store's new location on Shift4Shop. Fortunately, we have a CSV import function just for this purpose.

To import a list of Newsletter email subscribers:

1. Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager.

2. Using the left navigation menu, go to Customers > Customer List.

3. Look to the top right of the page, and click on Export / Import.

On the right side of the page, you will see a series of CSV import options.

5. Click on the + icon next to Newsletter Emails.

6. Then click on the Sample File link to download an example of the CSV file for import.

When you open up the sample file in your spreadsheet program, it will contain the following column headers that can be used to populate your mailing list.

• email
  The subscriber's email address.

• datereg
  The date the visitor subscribed
  Format for this field is mm/dd/yyyy

• name
  The subscriber's name

• address
  The subscriber's mailing street address

• city
  The subscriber's city

• state
  The subscriber's state

• zip
  The subscriber's postal code

• country
  The subscriber's country

• additional_field1
  The subscriber record's Additional Field 1 (if used)

• additional_field2
  The subscriber record's Additional Field 2 (if used)

• additional_field3
  The subscriber record's Additional Field 3 (if used)

• group
  If you have subscription groups created on your store, this field would be used to attach the subscriber record to a specific group.

Additional Information
Although the file contains these fields, the only one you really need to populate is the email column. All of the others are optional.

After populating the CSV file with your list of subscriber emails, save the file as a CSV and proceed with the following steps to import it:

1. Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager.

2. Using the left navigation menu, go to Customers > Customer List.

3. Look to the top right of the page, and click on Export / Import.

4. Click on the + icon next to Newsletter Emails.

5. This time, use the browse button to locate the newly created CSV file on your computer.

6. Click on Import Data to have it uploaded to your store's database.

Additional Information
The actual import/export process takes place "behind the scenes" of your store's software to prevent it from interfering with your store's active processes. By allowing the function to work in the background, you can go to other pages of the admin and still work on your store while importing or exporting large files.

During the process, you will be taken to the Import/Export Status page, which will display a grid layout of your recent imports and exports. The progress column will show you the progress of the import.

At the far right of each grid item will be an action wheel that contains the following options:

• Download: Allows you to download the CSV file after a successful import/export

• Notify Me: For larger, more time-consuming files, this option will let you input your email address so that you will receive a notice once the import/export is complete.

• View Log: Allows you to review the log of the import/export so you can see how many items were updated, inserted or if any records failed.

• Cancel: Allows you to cancel an impending import/export

• Retry: If for some reason the import/export fails, you may use this option to attempt a retry of the file.

• Delete: Use this to delete the record altogether from the status page.

This will be present in all of the store's Export/Import functions.

Your newsletter emails will now be present in the store.