Importing Email Addresses In An Email List Distribution Software
Email list marketing is normally done with the use of email message templates and email address lists. Combined together they yield personalized email messages delivered to every person on the address lists. Email message templates can be easily created in any email program, text or html editor and therefore will not be discussed in this article. However the process of getting email address lists for most of beginners in this field is sort of pain-in-the-ass since it involves different types of data transformations. Email list distribution is not possible without a list of valid email addresses therefore let’s talk about email address importing techniques.
Depending on the software you use to communicate with your customers, information about your recipients may be stored in a range of black boxes such as address books, XLS Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, databases and text files of different formats. On the other hand, email list distribution software is also a kind of black box you have to deal with. So, you have two black boxes you need to transfer your email addresses between. This raises a question: “What the hell am I supposed to do to move my freaking email list from one black box to another?”. Many people start to do some weird stuff like changing file extension from XLS or DOC to a whatever type the email list distribution software uses, or selecting and copying everything in a spreadsheet to the pasteboard and trying to paste it in the email list distribution software. This results in nothing but crash. After doing all this stuff with no success, they ask a question: “What is the name of that moron who designed this bloody software?”
Do not blame developers, they did it right. You can easily transfer data between two black boxes just by using temporary plain-text files in one of the standard formats: tab-delimited file format or CSV file format. Simply export your email list from the first black box to a pre-formatted plain text file (CSV or tab-delimited) and then import it in the second black box. CSV file format and tab-delimited file format are used in almost all software products including email marketing software products as an import and export options.
Let’s deal with address book export and address book import. Both Windows Address Book and Apple Address Book allow you to export email addresses to a plain text file in CSV file format or in tab-delimited file format. Email marketing software products can also import email addresses form address books directly. If you want to perform address book export, you should use the File-Export command in address book. If you want to perform address book import, you should use the File-Import command in address book.
How to import XLS spreadsheet made in Microsoft Excel. Open XLS file in Excel and save it as a plain-text file in CSV file format or in tab-delimited file format using the File-SaveAs command. If you need to edit an email list stored as plain text in Excel before importing it in en email marketing software, you need to perform some sort of CSV to XLS or tab-delimited to XLS conversion. To import CSV or tab-delimited file in Microsoft Excel you need to perform the File-Open command and specify the file format as plain-text.
Importing email lists from databases. Sometimes, customer information is stored in a database such as Oracle, IBM DB2 or MySQL. You can easily extract email list from it by using the database exporter that comes with your database system. All database systems can export data to plain-text files in CSV file format and tab-delimited file format.
Import from other file formats. The rule of thumb here is to convert the file you currently have to a plain text file. This plain text file then can be further converted to a csv or tab-delimited file, which in turn can be imported in email list distribution software. Microsoft DOC and XLS files should be saved as plain text files using the File-SaveAs command. Most of software products allow you to export or save their native file formats as plain-text files. Do not try to simply change file extension from DOC or XLS to TXT. This is not going to work. DOC and XLS files are actually binary files that appear as text only when you open them in Microsoft Office.
Finally, you get your email list in CSV file format or in tab-delimited file format. Now you can import it in your email marketing software. To achieve that, you should use the File-Import command in your email marketing software to initiate import. Then just follow the import wizard steps.