Skip to main content
Use customer import to subscribe or unsubscribe many customers at once instead of editing profiles one by one. This is the right approach when you need to update subscription status for a list of customers you already have, sync consent records from another system, or push a segment of customers into a new topic.
This guide also covers subscribing or unsubscribing customers selected by filter. To get the identifiers you need, build a filter on the Customers page and export the results first, then use that file as the basis for your import.

​
Before you start

You’ll need a file that contains:
  • At least one identifier column for each customer: Email, MobilePhone, your external system ID, or MaestraID.
  • One or more subscription columns for the channels or topics you want to change.
Use true to subscribe a customer and false to unsubscribe them. Leave a cell blank if you don’t want to change that subscription for that customer.
Subscribing customers in bulk only makes sense if you have a lawful basis for sending to them — express consent collected at signup, a pre-existing business relationship, or another basis that meets US email regulations like CAN-SPAM and applicable state privacy laws (for example, CCPA in California). Don’t import addresses you scraped or purchased.

​
Run the import

1

Open the import tool

Go to the Customers tab and choose Import → Import customers.
2

Choose the operation

Select Edit customers as the operation type.On this screen Maestra shows every field you can use, with descriptions and whether each one is required. You can also download a template file with example rows — start from that template if you’re not sure how to format your data.
3

Prepare your file

Keep only the columns you need:
  • An identifier column (Email, MobilePhone, external ID, or MaestraID).
  • The subscription columns you want to update.
For example, if you want to subscribe customers to the Email channel, to the News topic inside Email, and to the SMS channel, your file needs three subscription columns with true or false values alongside the identifier column.
4

Upload the file and create the task

Upload your file and create the import task. Maestra returns a link to the task so you can track progress and confirm when it’s finished.
5

Verify the changes

Once the task completes, open any customer that was in the file. The subscription update is recorded under the Change history tab, and an action is written to the customer’s timeline documenting the change.

​
Optional fields for finer control

You can override Maestra’s defaults by adding any of the columns below. Set the value globally in your import settings, or set it per customer by including the column in your file.
ColumnWhat it controls
LastUpdateActionTemplateThe action template recorded against each customer. Use the system name of the template. Only templates in the Personal action category are supported.
LastUpdatePointOfContactThe point of contact attributed to each subscription change. Use the external ID of the contact point. To use this column, turn off automatic point-of-contact detection in the import settings.
LastUpdateDateTimeThe timestamp recorded on the action. If you don’t include this column, Maestra uses the time the import task ran.
The point-of-contact column is useful when you’re backfilling consent collected on a specific landing page, store location, or campaign — set the column so the action is attributed to that source instead of “import.”

​
Add customers to a segment during import

You can drop everyone in the file into a static segment at the same time. In the import settings, either pick an existing static segment or create a new one. Maestra adds every customer in the file to that segment as the task runs, so you can target them in a campaign right away.

​
What happens after the import

  • Each subscription change is logged on the customer’s Change history tab.
  • An action is added to the customer’s timeline so you have a record of the subscription update, when it happened, and which point of contact it came from.
  • Customers who didn’t exist in Maestra yet are created from the identifier column, and their subscription state is set in the same task.
Maestra processes the file as a whole task. If some rows fail validation (for example, a malformed email), the rest of the file still imports, and the task report tells you which rows were skipped and why.