Mailchimp is a widely used email marketing platform, and having this integrated into the CRM can assist in attracting and retaining new customers. By integrating your CRM with Mailchimp, you can access the true ROI of a campaign initiative, whilst also providing your Sales team with real-time insight into your customers' behaviour. Using the CRM's Contact data, you can develop relevant email marketing content, resulting in more personalised emails and fewer unsubscribes!
Prerequisites
You'll need CRM Admin rights to follow the steps in this article
Set up the MailChimp integration
Step 1: Synchronise Contacts
You'll first need to synchronise your CRM Contacts to Mailchimp. In order to do so navigate to the System Settings here and search for 'Mailchimp' in the search bar.
Step 2: Select Type of Contacts to Synchronise
Before connecting your Mailchimp account to the CRM, you'll need to select what type of Contacts you'd like to sync to Mailchimp.
Firstly, you can select which Company Types you wish to be synchronised. Here you can select multiple Company Types.
Once you've selected your Company Types, you can then choose which Contact Roles are synchronised to Mailchimp. Here, you can select multiple Contact Roles.
Finally, you can then set a maximum number of Contacts to be synchronised to Mailchimp to help you avoid going over your subscription limits. Please check your Mailchimp pricing plan to set this to a volume based on your current Mailchimp usage and allowance.
Please note: If the number of Contacts that currently meet the Mailchimp sync criteria is greater than the limit set, the sync will not occur. This is to prevent syncing of too many Contacts and the integration pushing your account over the allowance. If your Mailchimp is not syncing due to the limit being reached, you need to decrease the amount of Contacts set to sync by reviewing the Customer Types/Contact roles configuration, or by increasing the limit on contacts to sync.
Step 3: Connect your Mailchimp Account
The final step is to connect your Mailchimp account with the CRM by clicking the 'Connect' button. You'll then be asked to log in to your Mailchimp account, and once completed, the synchronisation will take place.
Step 4: CRM Contacts within Mailchimp
After initiating the sync by signing into your Mailchimp account, the CRM Contacts will then be available in Mailchimp. Here's a screenshot of how your Contacts will appear within Mailchimp.
🤓Note: You may need to toggle on the CRM specific information such as RFM Segmentation, Contact Role, Company Type, etc. and custom fields.
Account Manager fields (name and email) are synced into Mailchimp as additional custom fields, which you can then use in your email content to your customers.
This data syncs every 30 minutes after the previous sync has completed, so if you change for example the company type in the CRM then this change will sync to Mailchimp 30 minutes after the previous sync has completed.
Contact Synchronisation
When a CRM Contact is created in Mailchimp or is linked to an existing Mailchimp Contact, there are certain CRM fields that we will be populated in Mailchimp. The fields below are CRM fields which should be reflected in Mailchimp:
Contact Primary Email Address
Contact Email Subscription Status
Contact First Name
Contact Last Name
Contact Role
Contact Industry
Company Name
Company Group Name
Company Type
Order Warning Days
Company RFM Categorisation
Company Account Manager Name
Company Account Manager Email
Step 5: Mailchimp Results in the CRM
Once you've sent your first Mailchimp campaign, CRM users will be able to view the recipient's actions from the Mailchimp email within the CRM. You'll find a Mailchimp page against the Contact record, which is where the recipient's actions on your email will be listed, such as whether they've opened the email. clicked on a link within the email etc.
Within the Communication page, you can also set the recipient's Mailchimp Subscription Status.
📌Note: the Subscription Status is mapped to Mailchimp already, so will be automatically updated. For example, if a recipient of your Mailchimp email campaign unsubscribed from your email, it will automatically mark them as 'Unsubscribed' back in the CRM.
Sync Contacts in Mailchimp
When importing Contacts to Mailchimp, you need to set which contact Company Types and Contact Roles you want to be synced. The number of contacts shown to fit the Company Type and Contact Role criteria also includes those who are 'Unsubscribed', and their Email Flag is set to 0.
These unsubscribed Contacts won't be imported in the first import, but will be brought in with subsequent imports if they've been updated. For Contacts to be imported in the first run, their Email Flag should be set to 'Yes'.
After the initial import, subsequent syncs will run every 30 minutes. This will get a list of CRM Contacts that have been updated since the previous import, and then update/create these in Mailchimp. If an unsubscribed Contact has been updated, it'll be imported to Mailchimp, but will be marked as Unsubscribed.
When a contact is updated in MailChimp via an Admin or User action, this will trigger a webhook to update that contact in the CRM. Currently, there is no handling for contacts being updated in MailChimp via an API action, such as a third-party integration (Shopify).
The CRM will filter out Contacts that do not have an email address.
Note: If the number of Contacts that meet the Mailchimp Sync criteria is over the limit set, the Mailchimp sync will stop entirely. If you have Contacts that are not in Mailchimp, please check the Mailchimp setting. To start the sync again, either increase the limit or alter the sync filters to reduce the number of Contacts who meet the criteria.
Contacts in MailChimp but not in CRM
We do not import contacts from MailChimp. If there are contacts in MailChimp that are not in the CRM that you want to import, you will need to create these manually. As long as the email addresses match, this will not create a new contact in MailChimp following the creation in CRM, and will then update one version with the latest info from the other system. This will most likely be the CRM, as the contact will have just been created.