Importing a list is the moment it is easiest to accidentally email someone who told you not to. Studio applies these rules on every import, from a connected provider or a CSV, and none of them can be switched off.
Only people still subscribed come over
Studio asks the provider for active subscribers only. Anyone who unsubscribed, bounced, or never confirmed on the other side is left there. Importing somebody's unsubscribes and then emailing them is the fastest way to damage your sending reputation.
An unsubscribe in Studio always wins
If someone opted out of a Studio list, importing that list again will not put them back on it. Re-importing is normal after fixing a mapping, after the list changes, or after a failed run. It is never a way to resubscribe people who left.
The same goes for your workspace suppression list (spam complaints and hard bounces). Those addresses still land in your CRM as contact records, but they are not added to the mailing list. The import summary counts them as skipped.
Re-importing tops up, it never duplicates
Import the same list twice and Studio recognizes it and adds only what is new. You get one list, not two, and one Person per address, not two. The summary shows the rest as matched rather than added.
Studio recognizes a list by the provider's own internal id, not by its name, so you can rename the list in Studio, or rename it at the provider, and a later import still finds the right one.
Tags are added, never taken away
Re-importing adds new labels next to existing tags. It never removes or renames tags you already have. If you remove a tag by hand and the provider still has it, a later import adds it again.
When two lists share a name
If you import a list called “Newsletter” from one provider and later import a different “Newsletter” from another, Studio asks rather than guessing:
- Keep them separate, a second list is created, named “Newsletter (Flodesk)” by default, and you can edit that name before importing.
- Merge into the existing list, both audiences end up in one list.
Keeping them separate is the default, because merging two audiences cannot be undone from the app. Your own hand-built list of that name is treated differently: importing into it is assumed to be what you meant, since nothing else has claimed it.
Importing does not push people back out
If you have several providers connected, pulling a list in from one does not push those people out to the others. An import is records moving between systems, not people signing up.