Your bookstore client, Worn Pages, wants to build a literary community through their email marketing. They first want to start adding contacts they've already collected. What is the very first step they need to take when importing these contacts into Mailchimp?

The very first step is to prepare contacts outside of Mailchimp. This involves organizing and cleaning your data, ensuring it's in a compatible format (like a CSV file), and removing duplicates or invalid email addresses. This preparation prevents errors during import and ensures data integrity. While importing the CSV is the next step, it cannot be done effectively without prior preparation. Deciding on tags is important for segmentation but comes after the initial data preparation. Creating a pop-up form is for collecting new contacts, not for importing existing ones.