How To Migrate JetPack Subscribers to MailChimp or Other Email Service

by WPChase Editorial

Blogs need building lists to encourage mroe readers and also to let your readers know about a new post coming. To achieve this, the WordPrss JetPack plugin makes it easy for you to add posts-by-email subscription to your website.

Why do you need to Build an Email List now

You are probably using Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest as a paltform to reach your readers, email however remains  the single most important marketing and communication tool on the internet. Research shows that email beats social media, blogs, and every other online marketing and communication tool in terms of effectiveness, cost, reliability, and deliverability.

Jetpack offers a subscribe form to build such a list however if you want to send exclusive newsletter only content, have an auto-responder, send targeted campaigns, etc then you need something more powerful. Read How To Temporarily Disable/Stop New Posts Email Notification subscriptions in Jetpack

Before moving on, you need a list of your email subscribers to switch from JetPack subscriptions to MailChimp, AWeber or any other email service provider.

You need a real email marketing service provider to build your email list.

To import all your existing subscribers. Please log into your WordPress site and go to JetPack » Site Stats. On the site stats page, you need to scroll down to the subscribers box at the bottom of the page.

JetPack Subscribers

On clicking the blog subscribers button JetPack will fetch the list of your subscribers. Once finished you will notice that there are two lists of subscribers. The first list is for WordPress.com users. You will not be able to see the email addresses of these users nor you can export them.

The second list is for email only subscribers. These are the subscribers who exclusively entered their email address in the JetPack subscription box. You can export these subscribers by clicking on the ‘Download all email-only followers as CSV’ link.

Downloading the list of your JetPack Subscribers

After downloading your email subscribers go ahead and import them into any email marketing service you want. Most email service providers offer import tools allowing you to upload a csv file containing your subscriber information.

How to import your subscribers into MailChimp.

Login to your MailChimp account and then click on Lists.

Here are a few different ways to import contacts to Mailchimp, but a file upload is the most common method. The file import process has two parts: First, you’ll prepare your spreadsheet of contacts outside of Mailchimp, and save it as a CSV file. Next, you’ll use our import tool to add your contacts to Mailchimp.

Prepare for Import

To prepare your file for import, follow these steps.

  1. In a spreadsheet program like Excel or Google Sheets, open your blank worksheet.
  2. Create and label a column for Email Address.
  3. Next to your Email Address column, create and label additional columns for First Name, and Last Name.

    Email Address is the only field that we require, but you can repeat this step for any other contact data fields you want to include in Mailchimp, like phone number, birthday, language, address, or country.
  4. Paste your contacts’ information into the relevant fields in the spreadsheet.
  5. Save the file in CSV format. This option can usually be accessed from the File menu in your spreadsheet program, labeled as “Export as .CSV” or “Download as .CSV”. Different spreadsheet programs will vary a little bit. If you use another file type, we won’t be able to process the file.

Nice job! Now that you’ve prepared your CSV file, you’re ready to import it to Mailchimp.

Note

On the lists page you will see a drop down arrow next to your list name. Clicking on the arrow and then click on Import.

Importing subscribers into MailChimp

On the import page, you will see many different apps you can import from. The first option in the list is to import from a CSV or Text file.

Import from CSV

Next you need to simply upload the CSV file you downloaded earlier. That’s all.

MailChimp will automatically fetch the email addresses and add them as subscribers to your email list.

The method is similar for AWeber, MadMimi, and just about every other provider.

We hope this article helped you switch from JetPack Subscription to MailChimp, AWeber, etc. Once you have moved to an email service provider, you can integrate optin forms in your sidebar and comment form. You can even use OptinMontser to boost your email signups.

Import to Mailchimp

To import your contacts to Mailchimp, follow these steps.

  1. Navigate to the Audience tab.
  2. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
  3. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Import contacts.
  4. Choose CSV or tab-delimited text file.
    click csv or 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.
  5. Click Continue To Setup.
    import-continuetosetup
  6. Click Browse and choose the file from your computer.
    field-importcontacts-uploadfile
  7. 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.
    import-continuetomatch
    If your import file contains only an email column, we’ll skip you to Organize (step 13).
  8. 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.
    example-emailfield-importcontacts
  9. 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.
  10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for all unmatched columns. You must match or skip all columns to complete your import.
    example-importcontacts-unmatchedcolumn
  11. After you’re finished matching, we’ll display a success message.
    alert-importcontacts-allcolumnsarematched
  12. Click Continue To Organize.
    import-continuetoorganize
  13. 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.
    Screen Shot on 2019-04-23 at 15-03-26
  14. 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.
    add-to-groups
    You’ll only see this option if you have groups in your audience.
  15. In the Choose status of these contacts section, click the drop-down menu to choose the type of contacts you’re about to import.
    dropdown-listimport-clickstatusofimportedcontacts
    The available statuses for contacts are:

    • Subscribed
    • Unsubscribed
    • Non-subscribed
    • Cleaned
  16. In the Update existing contacts section, leave the box unchecked unless your import includes contacts who are already in your audience.
    update-existing-contacts
  17. Click Continue To Review to confirm your import settings
    import-continuetoreview
  18. Click Import.
    click-toimport

After the import is finished, we’ll send a notification to the email address associated with your username.

Note

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