Overview
Below is a FAQ about Mailchimp answering things like "how to connect to Mailchimp", "how Mailchimp is mapped", "understanding contact count variances", and much more.
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What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is an online email marketing solution to manage subscribers, send emails, and track results.
What is the benefit of connecting my Mailchimp account to Kindful?
Kindful’s comprehensive Mailchimp integration combines the power of email fundraising, donor management and fundraising analytics to help you exceed your goals.
Activate your Kindful + Mailchimp Integration to:
- Seamlessly sync all constituent information and never worry about manual updates.
- Segment your Mailchimp Contacts with Kindful Groups and save for future mailings so you can easily track your email fundraising efforts and replicate what works best.
- Automatically merge donor information from Mailchimp and Kindful to see the full picture of your donor and create more targeted, informed and effective online fundraising campaigns.
- Track subscribes, unsubscribes, click-through-rates and more, all inside Kindful’s intuitive and powerful nonprofit CRM.
- Capitalize on Kindful’s intuitive reporting to understand everything from the big picture of your email fundraising campaigns all the way down to specific donor behavior and online donation preferences.
Of note, the integration will only work when it is connected by an Owner or Admin of Mailchimp, and the connected user remains at that access level.
Can I use Mailchimp to send automatic receipts from donations made in Kindful?
No. Mailchimp is best used for email marketing campaigns.
How is Mailchimp mapped to Kindful?
Kindful "Groups" are mapped to Mailchimp as "Tags"
And you can specify how each Mailchimp field maps to its corresponding Kindful field, as indicated below:
Is the syncing one-way or two-way?
Two-way.
Can I sync mailing addresses between applications?
Yes. Kindful will only sync a mailing address to/from the Kindful address fields to the Mailchimp address fields. We do not support syncing a Kindful mailing address field to a Mailchimp custom text field for address.
Do alternate or spouse emails sync from Kindful to Mailchimp?
No, only the contact's primary email will sync to Mailchimp.
Are contacts that are tagged in Mailchimp automatically synced back to the corresponding group in Kindful?
You need to recreate these tags now that you are connected to Kindful. Once they are recreated, you should see them appear as new groups in Kindful.
Do Mailchimp stats get tracked in Kindful?
The Mailchimp integration automatically pulls in statistics about mailings sent from your Mailchimp account. This includes opens, clicks, and optouts. Open and click activities are created on the corresponding contacts in your Kindful account, while aggregate statistics are available while viewing the activity on your main Activity Trail
Kindful gets notified as soon as your Mailchimp mailing is done sending, and it periodically pulls in new mailing stats for two weeks after the initial send. If you would like to update the mailing statistics from Mailchimp at any time, click the Refresh Stats button on the mailing activity.
Why do I see so many "Opened Mailing" status's that appear the same? Did my donor really open the email multiple times at the same exact time?
Yes this is most likely the case. If you see multiple activities of this, it means the recipient opened the email multiple times. It is possible and common there may be multiple activities saying the donor "opened a Mailchimp Mailing" all within minutes of each other or even at the same time. These may look like duplicate entries at times, but they are individual opens. Either the donor intentionally opened the email multiple times in quick succession or it likely relates to how their email server counts email opens during a refresh or cleaning out of their inbox.
How can I see who received the email in Kindful?
Seeing the list of recipients as a whole is easier in Mailchimp; however, if you head to the Activities page and filter for "Mailing Status: Mailing Open", this will give you a good list of contacts who interacted with this message.
If I remove an email address on a record in Kindful, will it be automatically removed in Mailchimp?
What if a record's email is altered in Mailchimp, would the record then be updated in Kindful somehow?
If someone unsubscribes to our emails through Mailchimp, would the Kindful record reflect that somewhere?
What triggers a sync?
The two-way sync runs whenever you add a contact to Kindful, change a contact in Kindful that is in sync, or create a new Group in Kindful. Also adding, removing, or editing any contact in a Mailchimp synced tag will trigger a sync.
How often do Kindful Groups sync with Mailchimp tags?
If you recently connected the Mailchimp integration for the first time, the initial sync could take up to 24 hours. Kindful will generally try to push updates immediately for subsequent syncs, although it may take some time for all of these changes to reflect in Mailchimp. Once a change is made in Kindful, webhooks are created and fired off immediately to Mailchimp.
If you do not see the changes you expect, I'd recommend going to the Groups page, clicking the Actions button next to the group in question, and selecting the "Refresh from MailChimp" option. Also if you have MailChimp tags that have not synced to create groups in Kindful, the "Sync from MailChimp" button at the top of the Groups page should help
Are all of my Mailchimp Tags automatically synced to Kindful?
Yes, as soon as you setup the Mailchimp integration with Kindful, all of the existing Mailchimp tags - but only those tags in the Audiences you've mapped to Kindful - will automatically sync into Kindful as Groups, along with the contacts represented by those tags.
Are all of my Mailchimp contacts automatically synced to Kindful?
We will import all contacts in Mailchimp that have their opt-in status set to true. The Mailchimp API does not include opt-out contacts when we import the lists to Kindful.
Can I search for Contacts created by Mailchimp?
Checking a contact's History page will be the best way to see if the contact was originally created by Mailchimp. If you happen to know the date you connected Mailchimp to Kindful, you could also use the "Join Date After" filter on the Contacts page.
What about contacts added to Mailchimp directly from a third-party source like Wordpress?
With Mailchimp connected, contacts added directly to Mailchimp via a Wordpress plugin will not automatically be sent to Kindful. Any contact added to Kindful via an API (e.g. Wordpress plugin) will not be automatically sent to Kindful; this is expected behavior. Any "interaction" in Mailchimp, however, should bring the contact over to Kindful.
The Mailchimp integration is generally two-way syncing. After the integration is connected, a new group created in Kindful should sync to Mailchimp as a tag and vice versa.
One factor is which fields are mapped for the audience list in your Mailchimp configuration settings. Mailchimp should attempt to push over information for all mapped fields.
The information available for the person in Mailchimp also plays a role. For example, a contact will be created in Kindful with just an email address if that is the only information available in Mailchimp.
It is possible to tag these donors and have them added to Mailchimp. This is done by creating a group in Kindful, which will create the corresponding in Mailchimp. An example would be if you wanted to send this welcome series to everyone who had their first transaction this month, you would use the contacts filter First Transaction Month: 2020-07. This would pull up all donors who gave their first gift this month. From there you would create a group of these contacts which would sync over to Mailchimp as a tag.
Are all of my Kindful groups automatically synced to Mailchimp?
No. Only new Kindful groups that have been created since the initial integration will be automatically added.
How do I sync preexisting Kindful groups to Mailchimp?
To add a previously created Kindful group to the sync, you will need to recreate the Group in Kindful with the same contacts.
I don't see any of my tagged contacts in groups when I go to their profile. How can I fix this?
Head to your App Directory > Mailchimp App Settings and disconnect Mailchimp from Kindful, then reconnect again. In some cases, Mailchimp revokes Kindful's permission to access data, which will bring the sync to a halt. This will not duplicate your data.
Can I limit which Mailchimp tags are synced to Kindful?
It depends which Mailchimp Audience the tags is in: All of your Mailchimp tags for each Audience that you map to Kindful will automatically sync to Kindful when the integration is created. Tags inside of Mailchimp Audiences that aren't mapped to Kindful will not be synced to Kindful.
Can I limit which Kindful groups are synced to Mailchimp?
The only way to prevent a Kindful group from ever being synced to Mailchimp is if a new contact is never added to it. Once a new contact is added to the group, the sync automatically begins and that group and corresponding contacts will be sent to Mailchimp.
What happens if Groups are deleted in Kindful or Tags are deleted in Mailchimp?
If a group is deleted in Kindful, it deletes the corresponding group (tag) in Mailchimp. If a group (tag) is deleted in Mailchimp, nothing will happen automatically. But, if a user does "Refresh from Mailchimp" on the group, we detect the tag is missing from Mailchimp and delete the group in Kindful.
I have Custom data in Mailchimp Custom Fields. How can I sync that data into Kindful?
In order to sync Mailchimp Custom Fields to Kindful, you must create identical custom fields in Kindful (with the exact same options, if it’s a dropdown menu or multi-select field) BEFORE you map your data.
If you re-map the integration, the Mailchimp integration will not overwrite the value (or any existing value in a contact field). It will only fill in blank custom fields.
If I adjust the mapping for the Mailchimp integration, will it retroactively change the mapping for contacts that already synced?
No, it does not go through and update previously-imported contacts, nor do we proactively push updates over to Mailchimp based on the new mapping.
I’m importing contact data from another system into Kindful. Should I connect my Mailchimp account before or after I’ve finished importing my contact data?
The best practice is to enable Mailchimp after the imports are done and contacts will be matched by email address, or if there’s no match, it will create a new contact when Mailchimp is connected. One thing to keep in mind is that Mailchimp will have the last say on the attributes of the contact. For example, if there’s a conflict between the name on the imported record and what’s in Mailchimp, Mailchimp will write its version when it syncs up with the existing contact. If there are any duplicate email addresses in Kindful, Mailchimp will sync with only one of the contacts.
How do I disconnect my Mailchimp account?
To disconnect your Mailchimp account, navigate to Apps > App Directory, and in the Mailchimp App Settings, select the red “Disconnect” option from the dropdown. This will not cause data loss in either Kindful or Mailchimp; it will simply terminate the connection between Mailchimp and Kindful.
Is it possible to undo the sync after it has run?
You cannot simply click an "undo" button, but we do have a filter that will be helpful. Once the integration has completed, you can go to the Contacts page and filter for "Join Date After" and enter the day before you connected the integration. This will pull up all newly added contacts after that date.
How can I see what contacts were created when I connected my Mailchimp account?
You can’t see the specific contacts without searching for them by name, but you will be able to see the total amount of synced contacts after the sync is complete by navigating to Settings > Integrations > Mailchimp > Edit Configuration. You will find the Contact Count listed per synced Mailchimp Audience.
Are Gender and Birthday available to map from Mailchimp to Kindful?
These fields are not available for mapping due to the varying formats the data values can be in from one system to the next. If you wish to map these fields from Mailchimp to Kindful, we recommend that you first create Contact Custom Fields in Kindful that mirror these field in Mailchimp. Once this is done, when you map from Mailchimp to Kindful, you will be able to drag the Mailchimp fields for Birthday and Gender to the newly created Contact Custom Fields in Kindful.
When I remove a contact in Kindful, is it removed from Mailchimp?
If you remove a contact in Kindful, it will remain in Mailchimp until you delete it from there.
Most of our contacts in Mailchimp are just an email address. How will those appear in Kindful?
If contacts are just an email address in Mailchimp, they will just be an email address in Kindful.
Will integrating Mailchimp create duplicate records in Kindful or are matches made? If so, can they be merged?
Kindful will make an attempt at merging, but it is likely duplicates will be created. The first name, last name, and email address would have to exactly match what is in Kindful for an automatic merge to happen. This means that if a Mailchimp Contact has an email address an no name, and a Kindful Contact has the same email address, a first name and last name, then after the integration runs, there will be 2 contacts with the same email address in Kindful. At this point, you can review the potential duplicate contacts using Kindful's Contact Duplicate Finder, and choose to merge the contact records or not.
Will Integrating put us in a higher price tier on Kindful or Mailchimp?
This depends on how many contacts you have in Mailchimp that are coming over to Kindful. If bringing over the contacts from your master audience in Mailchimp into Kindful takes you over the allotted number of contacts, then yes, it would charge the overage fee based upon your Kindful subscription plan. Please see Mailchimp for information about Mailchimp pricing.
Do auto-syncs happen? Will all new subscribers to Mailchimp automatically appear in Kindful?
If the new contact in Mailchimp is a part of the audience syncing with Kindful, yes, it will automatically pull into Kindful.
Does the contact remain archived in Mailchimp after Kindful interaction, or does the Kindful tag update change its status?
For all of our Mailchimp subscribers who migrate over and who are not donors, how do I isolate them and put them in a group for targeted email campaigns?
You could create a Group in Kindful of those contacts that would sync over to Mailchimp as a Tag. You could select that Tag in Mailchimp to be your target for an email communication.
After the integration between Kindful and Mailchimp is turned on, what happens in Kindful when someone clicks the unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email sent by Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is the source of truth for "unsubscribes". When a contact clicks "unsubscribe" at the bottom of a Mailchimp email, Mailchimp removes the contact from the particular tag that was used for distribution. The contact will also be removed from the corresponding group in Kindful the next time the integration runs.
How does the Email Integration Opt In field in Kindful work with the Mailchimp integration?
EIOI = Email Integration Opt In (in Kindful)
- Unsubscribing contact in Mailchimp - the EIOI field is set to ‘false’
- Permanently deleting contact in Mailchimp - the EIOI field is set to ‘true’
- Archiving contact in Mailchimp - EIOI field is set to ‘true’
With the Mailchimp integration, any new contacts that are added to Kindful after the integration is connected will automatically sync to Mailchimp and vice versa. Any contacts that existed prior to the integration being connected would need to be added to a group. This would sync to Mailchimp as a Tag.
What happens in the situations for subscribers who have already unsubscribed to Mailchimp in the past prior to turning on the integration? Would those contacts in the Mailchimp "cleaned" or do "unsubscribed" Audiences flow back into Kindful? Or only those contacts remaining in Mailchimp as "Subscribed"?
When Mailchimp is connected to Kindful initially, all Mailchimp contacts, including those who unsubscribed in Mailchimp will flow into Kindful.
I have an org contact that shows an error for Mailchimp in the External Info section of the Kindful profile because it doesn’t have a last name. It reads "Mailchimp Error field: LNAME, message: Please enter a value". What can I do about this?
Mailchimp has settings which control what fields are required or not in the integration. You can loosen the restrictions on the Mailchimp side of things.
Does Mailchimp offer a non-profit discount for registered non-profit customers?
Mailchimp offers a 15% discount to nonprofits and charities that they verify. The approval process varies depending on your location.
United States
If your organization is based in the United States, you’ll need to scan and email a copy of your official 501c3 determination letter to billing@mailchimp.com. Please use “Nonprofit Discount Request” as the subject line, and include your Mailchimp username somewhere in the body of the email.
International
If you’re a nonprofit based outside the United States, you’ll need to email billing@mailchimp.com with a link to your organization’s website. Please use “International Nonprofit Discount Request” as the subject line, and include your Mailchimp username somewhere in the body of the email.
If it's not extremely obvious on your website that you're a nonprofit, they may require you to email additional proof of your nonprofit status.
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