From member list to Flexmail: how to prepare your data

Why your data looks the way it does

Your current export makes perfect sense from the perspective of your membership administration. One row per member, per pupil, or per enrolment. If a family has three children, there are three rows, and each of those rows contains the same email address of the parent.

That's logical when you want to know who is enrolled. But it doesn't work when you want to know who should receive which email.

The key question that changes everything

Before you adjust a single column in your Excel file, answer this question for each type of communication you want to send:

Who should receive this email, and based on which attribute?

Work through this for each communication type:

• The general newsletter → everyone who has subscribed, regardless of group
• The class newsletter or group update → everyone linked to that specific class or group
• The payment reminder → the person responsible for payment
• The enrolment confirmation → the person who enrolled or registered

Once this is clear, you know which columns you need in Flexmail and how to distinguish between subscribers.

Step by step: from raw export to import-ready list

Step 1: Determine who your subscribers are

In Flexmail, a subscriber is the recipient of your communication — not the pupil, the member, or the student themselves (unless they are old enough to be communicated with directly). For a primary school, those are the parents and guardians. For a sports club, the members themselves, and for youth players, their parents as well. For a university, the students.

Create a separate row for each unique email address. A parent with two children in the club? One row, with the necessary additional fields for each child.

Step 2: Map out roles

Pay attention to a situation that comes up more often than you might think in membership administration: someone appearing in multiple roles. A father may appear in your export as the parent of two children, but also as a coach. A student may also be a volunteer. A club administrator may also be a member themselves.

In your raw export, those roles are often spread across multiple rows or even multiple lists. The approach in Flexmail: one subscriber per unique email address, with multiple tags reflecting the different roles. Start by mapping out which roles a person can have and which communication belongs to each role.

Step 3: Decide which information to bring in as a contact field

Not every column from your management system needs to come along. Only bring the columns you need for segmentation or personalisation.

Typical useful fields:

• First name and last name of the recipient
• Class, group, team, or module
• Role (parent, student, member, guardian)
• For multiple children per parent: a field per child for group or class

Leave out: internal IDs, financial data, medical information, historical statuses.

Step 4: Decide what goes via interests

Interests in Flexmail are more dynamic than fields: they are easier to add, remove, and combine. Use them for group classifications that change regularly, such as teams, classes, or enrolled modules.

Before importing, write out your interest structure. Consistent naming is crucial: U12_Football and u12 football are two different interests in Flexmail.

Step 5: Clean up

Remove rows for contacts who have unsubscribed or for whom you do not have valid consent. Check for typos in email addresses. Remove duplicates: for each unique address, keep the most complete row.

Step 6: Convert to import format

Flexmail imports CSV files. Each column in your CSV becomes a field in Flexmail. Make sure the column names match the field names you have created in Flexmail, or create the fields before importing.

Example: before and after

Raw export (three rows for the same family):

Child's name	Class	Parent email	Parent first name	Parent role
Lars	4A	sofie@x.be	Sofie	Parent
Emma	2B	sofie@x.be	Sofie	Parent
		sofie@x.be	Sofie	U10 Coach

Import-ready row for Flexmail (one row per unique email address):

First name	Email	Child 1 class	Child 2 class	Interests
Sofie	sofie@x.be	4A	2B	Parent_4A, Parent_2B, Coach_U10

Connecting to external systems

Flexmail does not offer a native integration with membership administration systems such as SchoolSoft, Sportbeheer.be, or other sector-specific tools. But that doesn't mean everything has to be done manually. No developer in-house? No problem — even without technical knowledge, there are options.

Via the Flexmail API, a developer or technical administrator can automatically create or update contacts from an external system. Think of an automatic sync when a new member signs up, or a trigger that sends a transactional email as soon as a payment is registered.

If you'd rather not build a custom integration, you can also work with intermediary automation tools that let two platforms communicate without any coding. You create a "recipe": when a new enrolment comes in from system X, add a subscriber to Flexmail with the correct fields and tags.

Checklist: are you ready to import?

Run through these points before clicking "import":

• One row per unique email address
• Roles mapped per person and translated into interests
• Only contacts with valid consent
• Columns limited to what you need for segmentation and personalisation
• Interest structure written out with consistent naming
• Custom fields created in Flexmail before importing
• Typos in email addresses corrected
• Unsubscribed or lapsed contacts removed

Want to know more about consent and GDPR? Read it in this blog: GDPR and communication about minors: how to do it right.

After that, it runs itself

A good import is a one-time investment — and immediately the strongest foundation for everything that follows. Once your structure is in place, you can add new contacts, adjust tags, and expand segments without having to start from scratch every time. That leaves you free to focus on what really matters: communication that lands.

Want to find out how to put that structure to smart use in your communications? Read all about it in this blog: Email marketing for schools and associations: how to communicate smartly with parents, members, and students.