A Drip export is ecommerce data: people with orders, carts and browsing events attached. Addresses arrive from checkout rather than from a subscription form, which changes what a typo looks like.
Getting the addresses out of Drip
People, apply a filter, then the export option. Drip emails a CSV of the filtered set.
Before the historical backfill goes out in a broadcast. A store integration imports every customer you have ever had, and that back cataloge is where the decay is concentrated.
What Drip does with the file you bring back
The import rules decide what a re-import actually changes, which is worth knowing before you upload.
The short version
- Imports match on email and update the person record.
- Bounced people stay bounced through an import.
- Custom fields and tags import alongside, which is where a verification verdict belongs.
- Billing counts people, so the same person with many events costs once.
The mistake to avoid
Some addresses come back unresolved, and that is a fact about the receiving server rather than a gap in the check. We label those and never bill for them. What that means, and why roughly 28% of business addresses land there, is set out on our page about catch-all domains.
46,000 store customers and a high-water mark
Say you connect a Shopify store to Drip and the sync brings in 46,000 customers going back to 2019. Drip's billing help describes a high-water mark: you're charged for the highest number of active people in the account during the billing period, not the number on the day the invoice is cut. Import first and prune later, and you've paid for the peak anyway.
There's a second surprise in the same help article. An unsubscribed person is still an active person in Drip's terms, because they can receive transactional email, so the 9,000 customers who opted out on your old platform count toward the plan as well.
Check the export before the sync. Suppose 4,100 addresses are invalid. Keeping them out means the peak is 41,900 instead of 46,000, and whether that crosses a plan boundary is something your billing page will tell you. The 50,000 pack is $89 with us.
Two CSV files, because status is set for the whole upload
Drip's import asks you to choose a status for the file: subscribed, unsubscribed or pending opt-in. It applies to every row in that upload. Their migration guide says opt-outs from another platform won't be recognized automatically and recommends two separate imports, one for subscribers and one for unsubscribes. Mix them in a single file marked subscribed and you've resubscribed everyone who left.
Drip also has an inactive state, described on its own help page. Read that page before deciding what to do with invalid addresses tied to real order history. You may want the purchase record kept for revenue reporting without the person sitting in your billed count, and inactive is the status built for that trade.
Whatever you choose, do it before the abandoned cart workflow goes live, since that's the first thing a store sync will trigger.
Questions people ask
Should I verify the whole store history before my first broadcast?
Yes. A store integration backfills every customer you have ever had, including addresses from five years ago, and the first broadcast is where all of that decay arrives at once.
How do I stop new bad addresses arriving?
Validate at checkout. That is the capture point, and every cleaning pass afterwards is repairing something that could have been prevented at the form.
What about B2B customers on catch-all domains?
Common in wholesale and trade accounts. We label them rather than guessing, and they belong in a separate segment where a weak result does not distort your consumer numbers.