Import customers and past orders into Shopify without triggering welcome emails or points

When you move a store to Shopify, or bring a customer list in from another system, you often load the data into Shopify yourself: Shopify’s customer CSV import, Matrixify, an agency’s script, or the order import of your old platform. Charm can’t tell those rows from live traffic. Every new account arrives as a signup and every imported order as a fresh order, and the program reacts the way it would for a real customer. This page covers what fires and how to keep the program quiet while the import runs.

Moving loyalty data (balances, tiers, unused reward codes)? Use Charm’s own importer instead. It creates any missing Shopify accounts itself, marks them as migrated so they never receive a signup bonus, and sends no email.

What an import looks like to Charm

You import	Charm sees	What happens unless you prepare
Customers	A new account	The Welcome to the program email goes out to each one (while that email is on). The signup bonus is credited when it’s set to As soon as the account is created.
Customers with email marketing consent	A newsletter opt-in	The Subscribe to the newsletter bonus can be credited when that rule is on, and a signup bonus set to After the customer opts into email marketing can land too.
Orders	A paid order	Charm reads the order’s original date (see below). Orders dated before your program went live earn nothing and don’t move tiers, and orders dated before you installed Charm don’t start a paid membership. Orders dated after it earn points like any other order.

Before you import customers

1. Tag every row. Add a tag that starts with migrated- to each customer in your file (for example migrated-woocommerce), in the tags column of Shopify’s customer CSV or of your import tool. Charm treats an account created with such a tag as a member who moved over, not as a new signup: no welcome email and no signup bonus at account creation. The tag has to be in the file. Charm decides at the moment the account is created, so adding it afterwards changes nothing. Any suffix works and letter case doesn’t matter.
2. Pause the newsletter bonus if your file sets marketing consent. In Program → Earning points, pause Subscribe to the newsletter for the duration of the import and turn it back on afterwards.
3. If you can’t tag, turn the program’s signup reactions off for the import. In Emails, switch Welcome to the program off (how) and pause the Signup bonus rule, then restore both when the import is done. Real customers who sign up in that window get neither, so prefer the tag when the store is already live.

Note

A signup bonus set to After the customer’s first paid order or After the customer opts into email marketing is granted later, on the member’s next order or opt-in, and the tag doesn’t stop it. If migrated members shouldn’t receive it at all, bring them in through Charm’s importer, which marks them so the bonus is never paid.

Caution

Charm pauses its automatic welcome emails when a store creates an unusually large number of accounts in a short time, and alerts our team. That safety net exists for abuse and engages after the fact, so hundreds of emails can leave before it does. It’s not a substitute for tagging.

Tagged accounts appear in Charm’s Customers list once they earn or redeem something, or as soon as you import their balances.

Before you import orders

1. Keep the original order date. Shopify stamps every imported order with the import moment as its creation time; the day the order was really placed goes into its processed date (the Processed At column in Matrixify, processedAt in the Admin API), which is also the date Shopify shows on the order and uses in its reports. Charm dates orders by that processed date. Orders dated before your program went live earn no points and don’t move anyone’s tier, orders dated before you installed Charm don’t start a paid membership, and orders dated in an earlier month than the import don’t count toward your plan’s monthly orders.
2. Tag orders placed after your launch. If the import includes orders dated after your program went live (say the two platforms ran side by side for a while), those earn points like any other order. To keep them out, give every imported order a tag (for example imported) and add it under Settings → Eligibility → Ignored orders before you import (how). Ignored orders trigger no rules and award nothing. They still count toward your plan’s monthly orders when they’re dated in the current month, like every paid order in your store.
3. Bring the history over as balances, not as orders. Imported orders never earn points for the past. If customers should start with what they earned before, import their point balances or use the platform migration; both can set the VIP tier as well.

After the import

• Spot-check a few imported members under Customers: no welcome email in their email history, no signup bonus in their timeline, tier as expected.
• The Activity Log shows everything the import set off.
• Emails that already went out can’t be recalled. Points credited by mistake can be taken back per customer with Adjust balance on the customer page, and an import made through Charm can be reverted in one step.

Related

• Migrate from Smile, Rivo, Loloyal, LoyaltyLion or another loyalty platform
• Import existing customer point balances
• Ignore orders by tag
• Set up a signup bonus for new customers
• Turn off an individual email type
• Check your plan, order cap, and overage status