Integrate Mailchimp
Use the Optimizely Data Platform (ODP) integration with Mailchimp to sync your customer and email activity data with ODP. ODP automatically captures all email send, open, and click events for your customers and syncs insights and observations back to Mailchimp regularly.
You must enable both the integration to send data to ODP and the integration to send data back to Mailchimp to take advantage of both functions.
Requirements
To integrate ODP with your Mailchimp account, you need to generate a Mailchimp API key.
- Log in to Mailchimp and go to Account > Extras > API keys.
- Generate a key by clicking Create A Key.
Configure send data from Mailchimp to ODP
Enable the ODP Mailchimp integration to send customers and email activity into ODP.
The data made available by the integration is:
- Customer Data – The customers from the audience chosen during integration and all customers that have received an email in the last 60 days.
- Subscription Data – The subscription status for the audience members chosen during integration.
- Subscribed – Mailchimp sends a subscribe event, resulting in null for the customer's global consent in ODP. Null means the customer has given consent and can receive emails.
- Unsubscribed – Mailchimp sends an unsubscribe event, resulting in a false value for the customer's global consent in ODP.
- Cleaned – Mailchimp sends a bounce event, resulting in null for the customer's global consent in ODP but also false for their reachability, preventing them from receiving emails.
- Email Activity Data – The last 60 days of activity, which includes sends, opens, clicks, and bounces.
All campaign data syncs hourly while the subscription status syncs daily, after the initial import.
- Generate an API key in Mailchimp and insert that key under Data Setup > Integrations > Mailchimp.
- Select the desired customer audience in List Name. Typically, the selected list is the audience with the most members.
- Click Save to enable the integration and start the initial import. It could take a few hours for the initial import to finish depending on the volume of email history in the last 60 days.
Configure send data from ODP to Mailchimp
Enable the ODP Mailchimp Sync app to send customer insights, observations, and attributes that are generated in ODP back to Mailchimp for email targeting.
ODP returns data to Mailchimp as custom audience fields. Mailchimp accounts are limited to 30 custom fields in regular accounts and 80 in Premium accounts. If syncing data from ODP exceeds these maximums, you may need to delete custom fields to successfully sync your ODP data.
ODP syncs any customer attribute, insight, or observation back to Mailchimp. When you configure the integration, ODP will suggest a default set of attributes, but you may add or delete attributes at any time.
Deleting an attribute from your settings does not remove the field or the data in Mailchimp. You will need to delete the field yourself.
Data syncs every night for all customers in ODP with an email who are in the Mailchimp audience/list. ODP will not create new customers in Mailchimp.
- Go to Data Setup > App Directory > Mailchimp Sync > Install App.
- Next, generate an API key in Mailchimp and insert that key into the API Key field. You may use the same key you generated for sending data into ODP. Authenticate to test the connection.
- Configure your sync. First, choose which list to sync back to—ODP data will only be appended for customers on this list. You may add or remove fields to sync, or retain the defaults. Click Fields for Sync to see a list of options. Once you have identified the fields that you want to sync, click Save. Make sure you save even if you do not make changes to the defaults. You can start an immediate sync or wait to sync overnight.
- Come back to this page at any time to make changes to this configuration.
