How to add historical Shopify subscribers to your list

You will learn

Learn how to add historical Shopify subscribers to a Klaviyo list, such as your email list. Historical subscribers do not sync automatically through Klaviyo's Shopify integration, so they must be added manually. This guide will show you how to add email subscribers, SMS subscribers, or both.

Before you begin

If you've yet to integrate your Shopify store with Klaviyo, head to Getting started with Shopify before continuing with this article. 

How to add historical subscribers

Adding historical subscribers to your email list requires 4 steps:

1. Download your subscriber list from Shopify.
2. Edit your list to only contain email or SMS subscribers, depending on who you want to upload.
3. Upload the edited list to Klaviyo.
4. Combine the uploaded list with your preferred list in Klaviyo.

If you'd like to upload both historical email and SMS subscribers, you'll want to complete this process twice - once for email, once for SMS.

Download your customer list from Shopify

1. In your Shopify admin, head to Customers.
2. Click Export in the upper right.
   
3. Select All customers. 
4. Select tags and/or metafields, if you'd like to include them.
5. Select CSV for Excel, Numbers, or other spreadsheet programs.
   
6. When you are ready, click Export customers.
7. If successful, Shopify will email you a CSV file of your subscribers.
8. Head to your inbox and download the file sent from Shopify.
   

Edit your list to contain only subscribers

1. Open your CSV file downloaded from Shopify in your preferred spreadsheet program.
2. Find the Accepts Email Marketing or Accepts SMS Marketing column, depending on which subscribers you want to upload.
3. Sort the sheet using this column. 
4. Select and delete all rows in the sheet where Accepts [Channel] Marketing is set to no.
5. Save your CSV file.

Upload your list to Klaviyo

1. Navigate to Audience > Lists & Segments.
2. Create a new list by selecting Create New > Create List.
3. Name your list, then click Create list.
   
4. On the next page, select Upload contacts.
5. Click Upload, then select your CSV file for upload.
6. Map only the following columns (other necessary properties sync through our integration):
   • Email > Email
   • Phone > Phone Number
     
7. Make sure you have not mapped Accepts Email Marketing or Accepts SMS Marketing, or you will receive an error. Then, click Next. 
8. Choose the option Yes, update subscription status for all imported contacts to subscribed.
   
9. Under Which channels have these contacts subscribed to? select Email or SMS.
10. Click Import.

The import may take some time to process. It will be marked Completed when it is finished. Once the import is completed, move on to the next step.

Combine the uploaded list with your list in Klaviyo

1. Navigate to Audience > Lists & Segments.
2. Click on the list you uploaded from Shopify.
   
3. Open the Manage List dropdown.
4. Select Merge lists.
   
5. For email subscribers: you'll likely want to choose your email list as the destination. For SMS, you'll want to choose whatever list you are using for SMS subscribers. You'll want to use the same lists you selected in your Shopify integration settings. 
   
6. Choose whether to keep or delete your uploaded list from Shopify.
7. Click Merge.

The merging process may take several minutes. For more information on merging lists, consult our listing merging FAQ.

Outcome

You've now added historical Shopify subscribers to your Klaviyo list.

Additional resources

• Getting started with Shopify
• How to sync Shopify email subscribers to a Klaviyo list