Moving Your Email List To The AiX Mailer: The Complete Move, Step By Step

Moving your email list sounds like a big job. It is really a short list of small jobs, done in the right order, and the ResultsAiX Mailer was built to make each one safe.

When you finish this guide, your subscribers, tags, custom fields and history will live in your own WordPress database, everyone who ever unsubscribed will stay unsubscribed, your sign-up forms and automations will be running on your own site, and your first sends will go out in a way inbox providers love.

Every screenshot is a real ResultsAiX Mailer screen, shown with our demo business, Brightline Coaching, moving its list across from its current email platform.

The Move At A Glance

Here is the whole move in five steps. Each one has its own part in this guide, and you can take a break between any two of them.

Why Moving To Your Own Site Is Worth It

• Your list is yours. Subscribers, lists, broadcasts and stats live in your own WordPress database, on your own hosting.
• Everything is unlimited. Subscribers, emails, lists, tags and automations. Your sending service’s plan sets your volume, and that is all.
• One set of people across every tool. The same person who opts in on your page, joins your webinar and buys your product is one subscriber, with one history.

How Long It Takes

Get Ready Before You Export

A few things set up first make moving day calm. None of them takes long.

Safe Mode: Your Moving-Day Safety Net

While Safe Mode is on, every outgoing email is held back: broadcasts, automation emails, welcome emails and opt-in confirmations. You can still do everything else, including importing, building lists and segments, writing broadcasts and building automations. Every email it holds is logged with the address and time, so you can see for yourself that nothing went out during the move.

On a new install the Mailer often switches Safe Mode on by itself, and an amber banner sits at the top of every Mailer screen while it is on, so you always know. When you are ready to send, you switch it off on the Safety tab by ticking a confirmation box first.

What To Export

Every email platform has an export, usually under Contacts, Subscribers or Audience, and usually as a CSV file. Export more than you think you need. A column you do not use costs nothing, and a column you left behind is hard to get back once you have closed the old account.

Engagement Is Worth Its Own Column

The Mailer’s engagement data starts with your first send from it, so engagement from your old platform does not arrive on its own. If your platform can filter by “opened or clicked in the last 90 days”, export that group separately. You will add a tag to it in Part 4, and it becomes the first group you email in Part 12.

Cleaning The File

Open the export in a spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets. Ten minutes here makes the import perfect.

The Columns The Mailer Understands

Unsubscribes And Bounces First

This is the step that makes your move feel professional to every reader. Before you import a single subscriber, bring across everyone who ever unsubscribed, bounced or complained. From that moment they are protected: no import, list, segment or automation can ever email them.

The suppression totals at the top update straight away, split by reason. You can search any address, add one by hand with Never email, and export the whole list as a CSV any time.

Importing Into The Mailer

The import has three steps, shown along the top of the screen: Upload CSV, Map columns and Import. Go to AiX Mailer, then Imports.

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Step 1: Upload Your CSV

Drop your CSV onto the upload area, or click Choose file. Files up to 200MB are fine, and large files upload in small pieces with a progress bar, whatever your host’s upload limit. Your file is kept in a protected folder only while it imports, then deleted automatically.

Step 2: Map Your Columns

The Mailer reads your headings and maps each column for you. Glance down the list: every column shows where it is going, and you can change any of them with its dropdown.

• Email must be mapped. Everything else is optional.
• Add A Custom Field sits at the bottom of every dropdown. Give it a name (for example Aff ID or Coaching Goal) and it is created on the spot, and remembered for every future import.
• Ignore this column skips anything you do not want.

Below the mapping, choose a list to add everyone to (an existing list, a new one you name right there, or none), and any tags to apply to everyone in this file. Brightline Coaching adds them all to a new list called Moved From Old Platform with the tag moved-in, which makes them easy to find later.

Step 3: Watch It Import

Click Start import. A progress bar fills as the rows go in, with five counters:

Big files run in the background in chunks. You can close the tab and the import carries on, picked up by WordPress cron. Keep the tab open, or press Speed up from this tab on the Imports screen, and it runs at full speed. If many rows in a row cannot be read, the import pauses itself and tells you why, so you can correct the mapping and resume.

Status, Consent And History

A good move brings across not just people, but the right status for each one and the history that goes with them.

Status Comes With Them

Each person also keeps their real sign-up date as First Contact, their sign-up IP, and their source. Someone who joined four years ago shows four years ago, not the day you imported them.

The Silent Import Lock

Here is a protection that runs quietly for as long as you need it. Everyone created by an import is flagged with the silent import lock. A locked subscriber:

• is never automatically entered into an automation,
• never receives a welcome email for joining a list,
• never receives a double opt-in confirmation request.

They do receive the broadcasts you choose to send them, because that is your decision. So you can build your welcome automation the day after the move, and only genuinely new sign-ups from your forms receive it. The Safety tab shows how many people carry the lock, and the Lists tab has a per-list count with a Lift button for when you want an imported list to take part in automations. Lifting it only affects what happens from then on.

Consent You Already Hold

If you collected consent on your old platform or on paper, record it in the Mailer too. On the Subscribers screen, filter to the people concerned (for example by the moved-in tag), use Select All Matching, and choose Mark as consented. Each person’s profile then shows consent on record. New sign-ups record their own consent when they tick the consent box on your forms.

Checking Your Import

Five minutes of checking gives you complete confidence in your new list.

Undo Is One Click

If a file went in with the wrong mapping, open the Safety tab, find it in the import history and click Roll back. It removes only the people that import created who have never been emailed, never opened or clicked, and not been added to another list since. Anyone who existed before is left exactly as they were. Then fix the mapping and import again.

Verify Leads Before Your First Send

The Verify Leads screen checks your whole list on your own site and sorts it into clear groups: alive, cold, unknown (no history yet, which is where a freshly moved list lands), typo domains such as gmial.com with a one-click spelling fix, dead domains, masked addresses and role addresses such as info@. Fixing typo domains alone often recovers real people.

Rebuilding Your Forms

Your sign-up forms are how new people join, so rebuild them early and point them at the Mailer. Go to AiX Mailer, then Forms, and click New Form.

Each form counts its displays and conversions, so you see your conversion rate from day one. For popups, slide-ins, sticky bars and content lockers, ResultsAiX Engage is the dedicated tool, connected to the same Mailer lists and tags.

Rebuilding Your Automations

Automations are the emails that run without you: your welcome series, your lead magnet delivery, your follow-ups. Rebuild them on the Mailer’s visual canvas under Automations, or start from one of the 25 Prebuilt Automations and make it yours.

Match Each Old Trigger To A Mailer Trigger

Build It, Step By Step

People Who Were Part-Way Through

Thanks to the silent import lock, imported people never fall into a new automation by accident. When you do want someone in a flow, for example everyone who was half-way through your old welcome series, filter them on the Subscribers screen, tick them, and choose Enroll In Automation. It is always your explicit choice.

Connecting Your Sending Service

The Mailer hands your emails to a professional sending service, which delivers them. It works with SMTP2GO, Amazon SES, Brevo, Mailgun, Postmark, SendGrid, Resend, SparkPost, Mailjet, Elastic Email, your own SMTP server and WordPress mail. Guide 2 helps you choose, and Guide 3 walks through SMTP2GO from sign-up to first send.

Then run the check on the Deliverability tab: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MX for your sending domain, with a score out of 100. When it passes, switch Safe Mode off on the Safety tab. You are ready to send.

Your First Weeks Of Sending

Your list knows you, but your new sending setup is new to inbox providers. The best first month starts with your most engaged readers and grows week by week. Guide 4 explains the why in detail. Here is the how, for a moved list.

Who To Email First

Everyone you import starts with no Mailer engagement, because engagement is counted from emails sent by the Mailer. So you choose the first group yourself, from what you know:

• First: the people tagged engaged-before-move (Part 4), your newest sign-ups, and your customers.
• Next: everyone else who joined in the last year.
• Gradually: older and quieter people, a few hundred at a time.

As soon as people open and click your Mailer emails, the Mailer takes over: every broadcast’s Audience step shows who opened or clicked in the last 30 days, 31 to 90 days ago, or not in 90 days, and Send in waves, most engaged first sends to them in that order, with you deciding when each next wave goes.

Your Pace

Set a steady pace under Settings: an hourly ceiling for broadcast emails (for example 1,500 an hour), and a sending window if you want one. On the Sending tab, tick Warm up on your new connection and pick a pace (Conservative, Standard, Fast or Custom), and the queue spreads big sends over the days for you.

Running Both Side By Side

Many people keep their old platform open for a few weeks while the Mailer takes over. It is a calm way to move, and it lets you switch at your own pace.

When To Close The Old Account

Once your forms point to the Mailer, every automation has a Mailer version, and a few weeks of broadcasts have gone out from your own site, do a final export of everything (including unsubscribes) for your records, import the last unsubscribes, and close the old account. Your list is home.

Your Moving-Day Checklist

Tick these off in order. Each one is a small job, and together they are the whole move.

Before Moving Day

On Moving Day

After Moving Day

Questions People Ask

What To Read Next

This is Guide 5 of 15 free AiX Training Guides, each with its own free PDF. With your list moved, Guide 6 shows you the automations that turn it into a business that runs while you sleep.

Your First Step, Today

Log in to your current email platform and export three files tonight: your subscribers, your unsubscribes and your bounces. Save them somewhere safe. With those in hand, the rest of the move is a few calm sessions on your own site.