- Select the "Lists" menu on the right of your screen. If you cannot see this menu item, click the "hamburger" icon at the top of the page to reveal the left menu.
- Above the "lists" grid click the "Create New" button. This will take you to a list details form.
- Enter all of your list's details. Pay special attention to the required fields, which are marked with red asterisks. If your list is reputable (made up of subscribers you have collected yourself) you can change the "opt-in" status to "single opt-in". Once you have finished filling out the form click the "Save" button at the bottom on the screen.
- Your form should have successfully saved. You can now navigate back to the "lists" grid by clicking "Quick links", then "All Lists".
- Select your recently created list by clicking on the title.
- You are now in your list overview. If you want to create a custom field, click the "Manage" button on the "Custom fields" icon. Alternatively, if you do not want to create a custom field, skip to step 9 of this tutorial.
Custom fields are used for mail merge or segmentation variables, such as date of birth, address, gender, interests, etc. The default fields are first name, last name and email address.
- At the bottom of the page you can add the field data type you require: text, dropdown, multiselect, date, etc. These are also useful when creating a subscriber register form through Mail Blaze.
- If you want to create a birthday field you would need to choose the date field. Enter the label, help text and tag text. The tag is a single word name (no spaces) which you would use to mail merge information into a campaign. In the example below the tag is [DOB]. When you are happy with all of your custom fields scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Save" button.
Custom field tags need to match the title in your CSV data file.
- It's time to load your subscribers into the Mail Blaze system. You can do this manually, by importing via CSV/Text file upload or through a SQL connection. In this tutorial, we are going to look at the CSV file upload method, because who has time to manually upload a list of thousands of subscribers? Using Excel, open the spread sheet containing your list. Make sure there are no empty rows or columns and that the first row includes the column titles.
If you use a different spreadsheet tool please Google instructions on how to export your data as a CSV file.
- Once your data is ready to save click "File", then "Save As". You will be presented with a popup window. From the "Save as type:" dropdown select "CSV (MS-DOS) (*.csv)". Name and save your spreadsheet. There will be two warning windows, just click "OK", and then "YES". Your spreadsheet is now in CSV format.
- Great! You are ready to import your CSV file. Get back into your list overview (steps 4-6 of this tutorial) and click the "View" button on the "Tools" icon. Now click the "View" button on the "Import" icon, and finally click the "Select File to Import" button on the "CSV file (live import)" icon.
- You will be prompted with an "Import from CSV file" popup. Click the "Choose File" button, browse to and "Open" the CSV file you created in steps 9 and 10 of this tutorial, and click the "Upload file" button.
- The list will begin to upload. Please note: if your list is large (>2 megabyte CSV file [might be better as number of subscribers?]), it might take a few moments to upload. Mail Blaze imports in batches of 15,000 subscribers with a 1 second interval. If there are any errors with your file, or duplicate emails in your subscribers, you will be notified on this screen.
- Congratulations! You have successfully loaded your list to the Mail Blaze system. You can view it by clicking "View" button on the "Subscribers" icon. This can be found in the list overview (see steps 4-6 of this tutorial).
