How to export your email list (Mailchimp, Klaviyo — and why to do it quarterly)

Mailchimp

1. 1
   Audience → All contacts

   Pick the audience if you have several.
2. 2
   Export Audience → Export CSV

   Mailchimp builds the export in the background and emails you when it's ready.
3. 3
   Unpack the ZIP

   You'll get separate CSVs per contact type — subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, cleaned. Keep them all: the unsubscribe list is a compliance record, not clutter.

Klaviyo

1. 1
   Check your role first

   Only Owner, Admin, and Analyst roles can export — a deliberate control worth knowing before you need it.
2. 2
   Audience → Lists & segments → open the list

   Your main newsletter list, plus any high-value segments.
3. 3
   Manage list → Export list to CSV

   Export all profile properties unless you have a reason not to — a backup should be complete.

Handle the file like the PII it is

• Store it encrypted and access-controlled (your backup location or a restricted drive folder) — never in email threads or shared chat.
• It's customer personal data: the export is covered by the same privacy obligations as the platform. Consent doesn't lapse because the storage changed, and neither do deletion requests.
• Keep a dated copy per quarter and delete stale ones on a schedule — old PII copies are pure liability.
• One legitimate use only: continuity and migration. A backup list is not a licence to re-import into a new tool and blast — consent and suppression records must travel with it.

Make it quarterly

Put the export on the same quarterly rhythm as your register review and DNS export. The trigger events this protects against — an ownership dispute, a platform lockout, an account freeze, a hasty migration — all arrive without notice, and the difference between 'we lost two years of subscribers' and 'we lost nothing' is whether the last export is three months old or three years old.