Why can't I email the people I just imported?
You imported two thousand people. Your audience still says forty-one. Nothing has gone wrong, and this page explains exactly what bernard is holding.
A contact and an audience are different things
A contact is a record: a name, an address, some tags, some history. Anybody can be a contact. Importing a spreadsheet creates contacts.
An audience is the set of people bernard has evidence for, and it is the only thing a campaign can be sent to. Bernard works that count out from the evidence it holds, one person at a time. It never reads a number you typed and it never reads a column in a file.
That distinction is the whole reason bernard is safe to give your list to. It is also why the count did not move.
What the import recorded
If you confirmed a list during the import, each person from it carries a permission record that says where their permission came from, which list, and the date. Open any of those contacts and you can read the sentence.
That record is real and it is kept. What it does not do yet is raise your audience count: bernard counts permission given on this site, and counting permission brought over from another tool is a change we have decided to make but have not made. Saying "1,180 people can be emailed" while the send refused would be worse than the honest number you are looking at now.
The two doors that do open
- A form on your site. Somebody fills it in, gets a short email asking them to confirm, and clicks. That click is the evidence. Capture leads with a signup form shows how to put one up.
- Buying something from you. A buyer who leaves the marketing box ticked at checkout can be told about similar work from the same shop. That is a narrower permission than a form, and bernard treats it as such.
Both happen in front of bernard, which is why they count.
Getting your imported people through one of them
The route that works is to ask them from somewhere you are still allowed to write. While your old tool is still switched on, send one last campaign from it that says you have moved and links to a signup form on your bernard site. Bernard will draft that email and build the form. Ask Bernard for both.
Your order confirmations and your course pages are the other honest places to put that link.
What you should not do
Do not tick the permission box for a list you cannot account for. Do not import a list you bought. Do not ask us to raise the count. The refusal that frustrates you today is the same refusal that keeps everybody else's imported list out of your inbox, and it is the reason a bernard campaign gets delivered at all.
When do I need someone's permission to email them? covers the underlying rules in plain words, and Bring my mailing list across from another email tool covers the import itself.
The prompt
“I imported my list into [my site] but my audience count has not changed. Explain what bernard recorded and what I need to do.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- I confirmed the permission. Why is the audience count still the same?
- Because bernard counts only permission given on this site, and it has not yet been changed to count permission brought over from another tool. What you confirmed is recorded, dated and visible on every one of those contacts, and it is not lost. The change that lets it into an audience count is a deliberate one we have not made yet, and we would rather your count stayed honest than surprised you.
- So what did confirming the permission actually do?
- It wrote a permission record on each contact saying they said yes on that ActiveCampaign list, with the date and your confirmation as the evidence. Open any of those contacts and you can read it. It is the thing that will count when transferred permission is switched on, and it is what you would hand to anybody who asked how you got their address.
- How does somebody get into an audience today?
- Two ways only. They fill in one of your forms and click the confirmation link in the email that follows; or they buy something from you and leave the marketing box ticked at checkout. Both happen on your own site and both are witnessed by bernard, which is why they count.
- How do I get my imported people to say yes here?
- Ask them somewhere you are already allowed to write to them. The usual route is one last campaign from your old tool, before you switch it off, linking to a signup form on your bernard site. Bernard will draft that email and build the form. Your order emails and course pages are the other place a form link is fair.
- Can I just email them anyway?
- No. Bernard will not send to anybody it holds no evidence for, and that refusal is not adjustable. It is the same rule that stops anyone else's imported list reaching your inbox. It also sits underneath the send approval: when you approve a campaign, the recipient count you are approving has already had these people taken out of it.
- What about the ones who unsubscribed?
- They are on your do-not-email list and stay there whatever happens next, including if you undo the import. See the do-not-email guide.