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BillionMail Contacts: Import Subscribers and Use Groups and Tags the Right Way

Your email list is the most valuable part of any newsletter setup. BillionMail keeps it under Contacts, with four tabs: Group, Subscribers, Suspend List and Tags. This guide explains what each one is for and how to import a list without making a mess of it.

Groups vs tags: what's the difference?

• Group: a list. When you create a campaign, you choose which group(s) it goes to. Most people need only one or two groups, for example "Newsletter" and "Customers".
  
• Tags: labels on a subscriber inside a group, such as "wordpress", "paid" or "joined-2026". Tags let you send to part of a group without making a new list. A campaign can filter by tags.
  
• Suspend List: addresses that must not get mail, such as hard bounces and complaints. Don't empty it to "get more reach"; those addresses hurt your reputation.
  

Rule of thumb: create a new group only when people signed up for something different. For everything else, use a tag.

Step 1: Create a group
Open Contacts > Group and add a group. Give it a clear name, because you'll pick it from a list when sending.

Step 2: Prepare your CSV
BillionMail imports a CSV file (up to 5 MB) with an

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email

column and an optional

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attributes

column in JSON:

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email,attributes [email protected],"{""FirstName"": ""Jane"", ""city"": ""Leeds""}" [email protected],"{""FirstName"": ""Omar""}"

The doubled quotes are how CSV writes a quote inside a field. Spreadsheet apps do this for you when you save as CSV. Before importing:

• Remove duplicates and obviously wrong addresses (no @, spaces, typos like gmial.com).
  
• Remove people who unsubscribed or bounced in your old tool. Never import them as subscribed.
  
• For a list bigger than 5 MB, split it into several files.
  

Step 3: Import
Open Contacts > Subscribers and click Import. This is the import window:

• Overwrite existing users: leave on No unless you're deliberately updating details of people already in BillionMail.
  
• Subscription Status: Subscribe for people who opted in.
  
• Status: Confirmed only if they confirmed their address (double opt-in) or are existing customers who agreed to email.
  
• Group: the group from Step 1.
  
• Data: Upload File for a CSV, or Paste Data for a few addresses.
  

Click Confirm. The subscribers appear in the list with their status, last active time, group and tags.

Step 4: Tag people
Open the Tags tab to create tags, or select subscribers in the list and use Set Tag (or Bulk Tag on the Tags tab) to tag many at once. Then when you create a campaign, you can send only to, say, the "wordpress" tag inside the Newsletter group.

Use the attributes in emails
Attributes like the first name can be used in templates, for example

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Hi {{.Subscriber.FirstName}},

. Always have a fallback in mind: not everyone has a first name stored, so "Hi there" may read better than an empty space. Templates are covered in BillionMail email templates.

Keep the list healthy

• Never buy or scrape lists. Spam traps in bought lists can get your IP blacklisted in a day.
  
• After every campaign, check bounces in the analytics and remove addresses that bounce hard. See campaign analytics explained.
  
• Every few months, consider removing people who haven't opened anything in a long time.
  

Coming from another tool? Move from Mailchimp or Sendy to BillionMail walks through exporting and cleaning the list first.

More BillionMail guides

• Send API for transactional email
  
• WordPress email through BillionMail SMTP
  
• Email templates explained
  
• SMTP relay with Amazon SES, Brevo or Mailgun
  
• Mailboxes and webmail
  
• Campaign analytics explained
  
• IP warm-up plan
  
• Move from Mailchimp or Sendy
  
• Add a second sending domain
  
• Send your first newsletter · DNS setup explained · Deliverability testing
  

Applies to BillionMail 4.9, October 2026. Replace

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example.com

and

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mail.example.com

with your own domain and mail hostname. Menu names can change a little between versions.