Help · Audience

Exports

You can take your audience with you, whenever you want it, without asking us. Go to Audience → Exports and press Export, or press Export on the profiles screen, on a segment, or on a list. A few moments later two files are waiting for you.

Leaving is a supported act here, not a concession. Nothing about this is a special request, and nothing about it is slower than it needs to be.

Why there are two files, always

Every export makes two files, and the second one is the important one.

profiles.csv is your audience. One row per person, with the columns you picked.

do-not-mail.csv is everyone you must not email — their address, the reason, and the date. It has three columns and it never has more.

The two answer two different questions, which is exactly why one file could not do the job. Somebody who unsubscribed is in both: they are still part of your audience, and they still must not be mailed. Somebody who bounced, marked you as spam, or asked you directly never to be contacted is only in the second file — they are kept out of the first one entirely, so a file labeled "my audience" can never be handed to another tool that would mail them.

Whatever you do with the first file, take the second one with it. Any tool you move to should be given both.

There is also a third download, the Receipt. It is the export's own record of itself — what you exported, when it was cut, how many rows are in each file, and a fingerprint of every file — so that you, or any tool you hand the files to, can check that what arrived is whole and unaltered without taking our word for it. You do not need it to use your audience. Keep it if you want to be able to prove later what you were given.

Picking your columns

The picker shows you what you are exporting and lets you choose what each row carries. Email and Marketing allowed are always included and cannot be turned off — a file of people with no addresses is not a copy of an audience, and a file that does not say who may be mailed is the one that gets somebody into trouble.

There is no single "consent timestamp" column, deliberately. One column holding either date would make "when did they agree" and "when did they leave" the same cell, and nobody reading the file could tell which one they were looking at without also reading the status.

Marketing allowed is the real answer, not a guess

The Marketing allowed column is not a separate opinion about who you may email. It is the same check the send itself runs, asked at the moment the file was written: they have an address, their consent says subscribed, their identity is confirmed, and nothing is paused. If it says no, we would not have mailed them either.

Not verified—held, and which exports can contain one

Some profiles are held. We know an address but nothing has confirmed there is a person behind it — no order, no confirmed signup — so we do not mail them, and we do not count them. In an export they read Not verified—held in both consent columns and no under Marketing allowed. Never a bare subscribed, because they are not.

Which exports can contain such a row depends on what you exported:

• Everyone in your store — yes. This is the whole of what you hold.
• A list — yes. If you put somebody on a list, the record of that is yours.
• A segment — no, never. A segment only ever gathers verified people, on every screen in this product and on every send, so an export of one cannot contain a held profile either.

That is not a limit of the export. It is the same rule the segment's own count and the campaign it feeds already follow.

Who is not in either file, and why

People who asked to be erased are in neither file. When somebody exercises their right to erasure we delete their address. What remains is an irreversible fingerprint of it, kept for one purpose only: so that importing an old list somewhere can never resurrect them.

That holds from the moment they ask, not from the moment we finish. An erasure is not instant, and an export taken while one is still running would hand over the very address the erasure was about to take. So somebody who has asked is already out of both files, before anything has been deleted.

That is a real limit of what an export can promise you, and we would rather say it than let you find out later. If you move to another tool and import an old file from somewhere else, that tool will not know about these people. We will — but only inside this product.

The apostrophe in front of some values

A handful of values in your files will arrive with a leading apostrophe — '=SUM, '-1, '+44 7700 900123. That is on purpose and it is the cost of a file that cannot run code.

A spreadsheet treats a cell beginning =, +, - or @ as a formula, and a formula in a file you downloaded is a way for one of your own customers to run something on your device. An apostrophe tells every spreadsheet "the rest of this is text", and it is the only thing that reliably does. Quoting the value does not — a quoted cell still runs.

If you re-import the file here, the apostrophe comes off automatically and you get the value you started with. In another tool you may need to strip it.

Taking the files somewhere else

The files are ordinary comma-separated files with the column names on the first line and no preamble above them, so most tools will read them.

What no file can do is make the receiving tool map its columns safely, and we will not pretend otherwise. Every platform means something slightly different by "subscribed", and several of them will happily treat an unmapped column as consent. Before you import anywhere:

• Map Marketing allowed onto whatever field that tool uses to decide who may be emailed, explicitly. Do not leave it to be guessed.
• Import do-not-mail.csv into that tool's do-not-contact list, FIRST, before the profiles file. Not as contacts. If you import the profiles file first and the do-not-mail file second, there is a window in which the tool believes it may mail people who asked you not to.
• Check what the tool does with a blank consent date. Some read "no date" as "consented long ago".

What each status means

The Exports screen keeps a row for every export you have ever run, newest first. The Status column says where that one got to, and the Download column either holds the files or says what to do instead.

• Waiting to start — we have your request and have not begun yet.
• Working — we are writing your files now.
• Ready — your files are here, and the row says what day they go.
• Expired — the day ran out and the files were deleted. Run it again whenever you want another copy.
• Stopped — run it again — we tried to write the files and could not. Nothing was handed over. Run it again, and tell us if it happens twice.
• Canceled — somebody in that export asked to be erased while it was still being written, so we stopped it. That is the one thing that cancels an export. We would rather stop than hand you a file we would then have had to change behind your back. Run it again: the new copy is correct, and simply does not have them in it.

Paging. Under the table you choose how many to show at a time — 25, 50 or 100 per page — and step through with Previous and Next. The line beside them says where you are: Page 3 of 5. Type a number in the box to jump straight to a page. The page you are on is part of the address, so downloading something and coming back puts you back where you were, and the size you choose is remembered the next time you open this screen.

The link lasts a day

An export link works for 24 hours, then the files are permanently deleted and the row on the Exports screen says so. Run it again whenever you want another copy — there is no limit and there is no charge.

A link can refuse you, and it always says why on screen:

• It has expired. Run it again.
• Somebody in it has since asked never to be mailed, or asked to be erased. We retire the export rather than editing it, because a file that was quietly changed after you checked it is worse than one you have to run again. An erasure retires it the moment the request arrives, without waiting for the day to run out.
• It is not finished yet. The link is live from the moment you ask for the export, and the files are written after that. The Exports screen says which it is.
• The files were being cleared as you asked for them. Every part is checked against what was written before any of it is sent, so if a part has gone or changed — most often because the day ran out mid-download — you get the refusal rather than half a file. Run it again.
• You are not signed in, or your role does not allow exports. Exports are for owners and managers.

Nobody who merely has the link can use it. Being signed in to your store is part of what opens it.

A note on open counts, if you export engagement

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection opens messages on a recipient's behalf, so open counts read high and click counts do not. If you carry engagement numbers from here into another tool's reporting, that difference travels with them.

Who can do this

Exports are available to owners and managers. A marketer can build and send; taking a copy of everybody is a different act, and it sits one rung up.

Our own staff cannot export your audience, at all — not while helping you, not with your permission. It is not a policy, it is blocked in the product.