Connect Mailchimp so that the contacts you email from Mailchimp stay up to date with your records in ThirdSectorBee: their names, tags and marketing permissions. Opens, clicks and bounces from your campaigns come back to their timelines.
Before you start
- Mailchimp must be switched to Enabled on the Integrations overview. See enable a service first.
- Connecting, choosing an audience, mapping fields and pausing need
mailchimp:settings:change. - You need a Mailchimp login that can authorise apps for the account you want to connect.
- To share consent, the audience needs GDPR marketing permissions turned on in Mailchimp (Audience → Settings → Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags → GDPR fields).
Enabling Mailchimp adds eight touchpoint types to your beehive: [Mailchimp] Subscribed, [Mailchimp] Unsubscribed, [Mailchimp] Cleaned, [Mailchimp] Email changed, [Mailchimp] Profile updated, [Mailchimp] Email opened, [Mailchimp] Link clicked and [Mailchimp] Bounced. Disabling the integration hides them again; touchpoints already recorded stay on the timeline. It adds no payment methods or custom fields.
Connect and choose an audience
- Open Integrations → Mailchimp. The Connect tab opens.
- Choose Connect Mailchimp. You’re taken to Mailchimp to authorise the connection, then brought back.
- Check the Connected to Mailchimp panel: it shows the Account, the Login used, the Data centre and when you connected.
- In Audience, choose the audience your contacts should go to. Each option shows its member count.
- Choose Set audience.
If the audience has no GDPR marketing permissions you’ll see a warning; consent mapping won’t work until you turn them on in Mailchimp. To switch audience later, choose another and select Change audience. ThirdSectorBee removes the webhook on the old audience and registers one on the new one.
Map merge fields
- Open the Merge fields tab.
- Choose Add mapping, pick a 3SB field and the Mailchimp merge tag it fills. The fields you can send are First name, Last name, Gift Aid status, Supporter number, Job title and Organisation.
- Choose Save mappings. You’ll see “Merge field mappings saved.”
FNAME and LNAME are filled from first and last name automatically. ThirdSectorBee also sets a LASTSRC merge field itself, so it can recognise its own changes. Add any other merge fields in Mailchimp first if they aren’t offered here.
Map consent
- Open the Consent mappings tab.
- Choose Add mapping, pick a 3SB consent channel (Email, SMS, Mail, Phone or WhatsApp) and the Mailchimp marketing permission it controls.
- Choose Save mappings. You’ll see “Consent mappings saved.”
When a contact’s consent for a mapped channel changes, the permission is updated in Mailchimp. Where several contacts share one email address, a permission is turned on only if all of them have consented on that channel.
What ThirdSectorBee sends
Each time a contact is created, changed or deleted, ThirdSectorBee updates the member with their email address in your chosen audience:
- Merge fields from your mappings, taken from one contact when several share the address. If your audience has a
HOUSEHOLDmerge field, it lists everyone sharing the address. - Tags: every tag on the contacts sharing the address, prefixed
3sb:. A tag removed in ThirdSectorBee is removed in Mailchimp. - Marketing permissions from your consent mappings.
- A new member is added as subscribed. Deleting the last contact with an address archives the member.
Read this before relying on the sync for consent. A contact is held back when they’re marked as a child or deceased, or when email consent is recorded for them but isn’t yes under any purpose. A contact with no email consent recorded at all is still added to the audience as subscribed, with their marketing permissions left unset. If your Mailchimp sends depend on consent, check your contacts’ consent records before connecting.
A contact who is later marked as a child or as deceased is archived in Mailchimp, unless another contact shares the address.
Existing contacts aren’t all sent when you connect: there’s no full-sync button, so a contact reaches Mailchimp the next time their record changes.
What comes back from Mailchimp
Campaign activity. About once an hour, ThirdSectorBee reads the reports for your sent campaigns and records [Mailchimp] Email opened, [Mailchimp] Link clicked and [Mailchimp] Bounced touchpoints on the matching contacts.
Audience changes. Mailchimp is meant to notify ThirdSectorBee through a webhook when someone subscribes, unsubscribes, is cleaned, changes their email address or updates their profile. An unsubscribe also sets the contact’s email consent to No under the purposes that put them in the audience; an email change pauses updates for that address so someone can check which contacts should take the new address.
We have found a problem with the address this webhook is registered at, which may stop these notifications reaching ThirdSectorBee. Until it’s confirmed to be working, don’t rely on unsubscribes made in Mailchimp being recorded here: check unsubscribes in Mailchimp before contacting people through other channels.
Pause or disconnect
Pause outbound sync stops contact and consent changes being sent while keeping the connection and mappings.
Disconnect Mailchimp removes the connection, deletes the registered webhook and stops all sync. Contact data already in Mailchimp isn’t deleted, and you can reconnect at any time. Confirm in the Disconnect Mailchimp? dialog.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| “Mailchimp connection failed: …” or “Failed to initiate Mailchimp connection.” | Choose Connect Mailchimp again and finish authorising the intended account |
| “Mailchimp integration is not enabled in this environment” | Mailchimp isn’t available on this ThirdSectorBee environment yet |
| “Select an audience on the Connect tab before configuring …” | Set an audience on Connect first |
| No merge fields beyond the built-in ones | Add custom merge fields to the audience in Mailchimp, then return |
| “No GDPR marketing permissions found on this audience.” | Turn on GDPR fields for the audience in Mailchimp |
| A contact isn’t in Mailchimp | Check they have an email address, aren’t marked as a child or deceased, haven’t refused email consent, and that sync isn’t paused. Then edit the contact to send them |
| A contact stopped updating after their email changed in Mailchimp | Updates for that address are paused for review, and there’s currently no setting here to restart them. Keep the member up to date in Mailchimp directly in the meantime |
| Unexpected opt-out for a shared email | Review consent on every contact using that address: a permission is only on when all of them agree |