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Mailchimp

Update Mailchimp contacts with their unique share link and referrer information.

Note: The Mailchimp integration is only available to users on a GrowSurf paid plan.

Sync with your Mailchimp Audience

Step 1: In Campaign Editor > 4. Options > Integrations, click the Connect to Mailchimp button.

IMPORTANT: Because the GrowSurf data sync to Mailchimp only occurs after you have connected with the integration, it is imperative to connect with the integration BEFORE importing participants. Click here to see remedy options if you have already imported participants into your campaign but would like to sync their GrowSurf data to Mailchimp.

Step 2: Log in to Mailchimp

Step 3: Once connected, choose the Mailchimp Audience that you want to automatically sync to. GrowSurf will add/update your Mailchimp contacts every time a new participant is added or referred to your referral campaign.

Examples

View our Mailchimp tutorials to see different kinds of examples that you can copy/paste into your email templates.

Merge Tags

GrowSurf will automatically create these new *|MERGE|* tags for your Mailchimp Audience.

Mailchimp has a max limit on the number of merge fields that are allowed per audience/list. Typical Mailchimp accounts have a limit of 30 merge fields per list. Pro accounts have a limit of 80. If you are not seeing all these merge fields within your list this means your limit has been reached and GrowSurf cannot add merge fields to your account. If you wish to have all these merge fields available in your list, delete some of the merge fields from your list within your Mailchimp settings.

*|MERGE|* tag

Description

Type

Description

Example

*|SHAREURL|*

Participant's Share URL

url

The participant's unique referral link

https://piedpiper.com?grsf=d8a1wa

*|GROWSURFID|*

Participant's ID

text

The participant's unique GrowSurf ID

d8a1wa

*|REFSTATUS|*

Participant's Referral Status

test

The referral status of the participant*

CREDIT_PENDING

*|REFFNAME|*

Referrer's First Name

text

The first name of the participant's referrer (if applicable)

Gavin

*|REFLNAME|*

Referrer's Last Name

text

The last name of the participant's referrer (if applicable)

Belson

*|REFEMAIL|*

Referrer's Email

text

The email address of the participant's referrer (if applicable)

gavin@hooli.com

*|TREFCOUNT|*

Referral Count

number

The participant's all-time referral count

0

*|MREFCOUNT|*

Monthly Referral Count

number

The participant's current month referral count

19

*|PMREFCOUNT|*

Previous Monthy Referral Count

number

The participant's previous month referral count

200

*|NXTREWARD|*

Next Milestone

text

The text for the next/upcoming milestone reward (Only applies to milestone awards. See an example here)

You are only 2 referrals away from winning a free t-shirt!

*|NXTMREWARD|*

Next Monthly Milestone

text

The text for the next/upcoming milestone reward (Only applies to milestone awards. See an example here)

You are only 2 referrals away from winning a free t-shirt!

*|INVCOUNT|*

Total Invite Count

number

The participant's all-time invite count

11

*|IMPCOUNT|*

Total Impression Count

number

The participant's all-time impression count

150

**|REFSTATUS|* can be the following: CREDIT_PENDING (This participant must still trigger a referral for their referrer to receive referral credit), CREDIT_AWARDED (This participant triggered a referral and their referrer received referral credit), CREDIT_EXPIRED (This participant did not trigger the referral credit within the referral credit expiration window so their referrer did not receive referral credit).

You can use these *|MERGE|* tags in your Mailchimp email templates. Whether you launch a new marketing campaign or have an automated drip campaign going on, make sure to always include *|SHAREURL|* in your emails to provoke your contacts to make referrals!

Learn more about Mailchimp merge tags here.

Troubleshooting Tips

  • If the new participant isn't being added to Mailchimp, or if they are being added but their unique referral link isn't being synced to Mailchimp:

    • Activity logs will denote if a participant was added to Mailchimp or if they were failed to be added. (In the case of failure, GrowSurf will re-attempt to add them for 7 days).

    • Some failures are fatal to Mailchimp and cannot be re-attempted. One example is the 'Forgotten Email Not Subscribed' error, which means that the Mailchimp contact was permanently deleted from the Mailchimp Audience and so you must manually re-add them.

    • Make sure that your campaign Share URL is valid (e.g, the unique referral link that looks like https://yoursite.com). An invalid URL such as https://thiswontworkwill result in the new participant not being saved to Mailchimp.

    • If the participant email contains a + symbol within the email, Mailchimp will only allow a certain number of these emails into a list before it errors with a message such as gavin+duplicate@hooli.com has signed up to a lot of lists very recently; we\'re not allowing more signups for now

    • If your Mailchimp Audience requires specific merge fields (e.g, FNAME, LNAME), but your newly added GrowSurf participant isn't sending those merge fields to Mailchimp, then Mailchimp will reject the new contact from being added. This could happen if you had initially connected GrowSurf to Mailchimp, but you later made one or more Mailchimp merge fields in your Audience required. To fix this, you must uncheck the required field(s).

      • Depending on your last contact synced, in your GrowSurf campaign editor, you may see a "Your merge fields were invalid...Please enter a value" error message (see image), which means that GrowSurf has tried to save a new participant to Mailchimp, but could not due to a missing merge field value.

      • For further help, see Mailchimp Help - Set Default Merge Values for an Audience

    • Please note, that if a merge field contains a null value, this will break validation and result in Mailchimp not adding or updating the contact. Merge field values should be strings, or empty strings at the bare minimum.

  • If you have Final Welcome Email enabled in Mailchimp, but you are not seeing the email sent to new Mailchimp contacts:

    • The Final Welcome Email will not be sent out because GrowSurf adds Mailchimp contacts with a status of subscribed. This means that new contacts automatically double opt-in. To send Mailchimp welcome emails, you will need to Create an Automated Welcome Email.

  • Once a participant is added to Mailchimp, that is final. GrowSurf will never update participant information in Mailchimp nor delete them.

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