Adding Users and Creating Lists

To add users to your Iterable projects and ensure that you're sending campaigns to the right groups of people, you'll want want to create and manage lists of users. In Iterable, there are four kinds of lists:

• Static lists, which contain a set list of users that can change over time as you add and remove users, and based on a user's subscription preferences.

• Dynamic lists, which select users based on fields and events on their Iterable user profiles.

• Suppression lists, which help you exclude users from campaigns.

• Internal lists, which contain internal users and should be used for testing your campaigns.

To create static, suppression, and internal lists, use the Audience > Lists page. To create dynamic lists, use the segmentation tool.

# On this page

# Creating a new list of users

The way to add new users to your project in Iterable is with lists. You can import a CSV file with your users and their information, or enter the CSV values for your users manually.

To add users via the API, see List APIs.

To create a static, suppression, or internal list, navigate to Audience > Lists.

1. Click Import List.

   

2. Name your list, add a description if you'd like, and choose the type of list to create.

   NOTE

   The list description field has a max character count of 140. You can add special characters here, and emojis too! 🤩

3. Decide which, if any, of these options to set:

   

   • Blank list: A list that doesn't contain any users. These can be useful, for example, when you have an Add to List tile in a journey that's used to track users who have reached a particular point in the journey.

   • Update existing users only: Any new users that are entered into the import list will be ignored.

   • Trigger journeys from this list: When you update a list, you can add new users, and you can update user profile fields on existing users. Both of these actions can trigger journeys (for more info, check out our docs about journey entry sources). To prevent an update to a list from triggering journeys (regardless of how those journeys are configured), turn this toggle off.

4. Click Next, then choose how you will enter your user information:

   • Drag and drop a CSV file into the window.

   • Select a CSV file from your computer.

   • Manually enter the list data.

   NOTES

   • In order to import users via CSV upload, email is required. You can't import users without email addresses.
   • It is a best practice avoid leaving spaces between field names/values in the header and rows of your CSV and when manually typing in the data—especially for fields that are of type long.
   • In a single CSV file, you can include up to two million users. If you have more than two million users to add/update, split them into multiple files and upload them separately.

5. Click Next to advance to the Review page. Here you can verify that all details of your list are correct.

   

   The Review page also shows you the new user fields that will be added to your Iterable project because of your CSV upload. You'll notice that this is the case for month and birthMonth, above (green text to the right of New user fields to be added).

   Unless set in a specific format, new users fields are set as strings by default. You can set three data types within the Create List page: string, boolean, and date. Dates should be in one of the following formats if setting via the UI: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DD.

   WARNING

   You will not be able to change the name or data type of user fields once they have been created. Once a user field is set as a certain type, it is permanently that type. You also can't delete user fields once they have been created.

   For more information on field data types, read Field Data Types.

6. Once everything looks correct, click Upload Subscribers. Then, on the Results page, you can choose to view the list, check out the details of your list, or choose to upload another list. If you uploaded your list successfully, you will see a page like this:

   

If you try to upload a CSV with values that don't match the data types of existing user fields, your list will be created, but users with incorrect values will not be added to the list or created within your project. Only users with correct values will be added to the list and created if they don't already exist.

Users who do not meet Iterable's email validation requirements will also be dropped from the import.

# Best practices for CSV import

To learn more about importing lists with CSV files, check out CSV list import best practices.

# Migrating subscribers from another email service

CSV uploads can be a useful way to migrate subscribers from another service. To learn more, read Migrating subscribers from another email service via CSV uploads.

# Adding users to an existing list

To add new or existing users to an existing list:

1. Navigate to Audience > Lists.

2. Find the list that you want to add to and click Add Subscribers / Modify List.

3. Follow the same instructions as above to add users to the selected list.

# Removing users from a list

To remove users from a list, you can use the Lists page:

1. Navigate to Audience > Lists.

2. Hover over the list from which you'd like to remove users, and click Remove Subscribers.

3. Upload a CSV or manually enter a list of the users that you'd like to remove.

4. Click Remove Subscribers.

You can also remove users from a list on the User Profile page, and using Iterable's API.