Error When Importing Role Based Email Addresses into MailChimp

When importing email addresses into MailChimp as part of a bulk upload, you’ll often get an error message stating that some of the email addresses (generally role based) could not be imported.

Role based emails are addresses that are generally linked to a position, rather than a person. For example, email addresses starting with webmaster@, support@ or admin@, these addresses won’t import into MailChimp automatically.

It happens because MailChimp is aware that while one person might have signed up for a newsletter, the next person in the role might not have, and if they suddenly start getting emails from you – they might report you as a spammer.

All is not lost though, it’s still possible to add the subscriber if you’re certain they will want to receive your communication.

To find out which email addresses were the problem:

(1) if you’re still in MailChimp click on the underlined number in the notice or

(2) if you’ve logged out of MailChimp you’ll receive an email which will have a text file as an attachment listing all the email addresses that didn’t import correctly.

(1) (2)

To add a role based email address to MailChimp, just go to the Add Subscribers form, or your websites subscribe form and add each role based email address individually.

Just a note: If someone can’t be added because they’ve previously unsubscribed, whether they unsubscribed themselves or you did it for some reason, you won’t’ be able to add them again. They will have to go to your subscribe form and add themselves.