Mailchimp Audience Tags
Keep a Mailchimp tag in step with an Ours Privacy audience, so you can send campaigns to the people who match it without exporting lists by hand.
Use this page to connect an Ours Privacy audience to Mailchimp. Each audience becomes a tag in one of your Mailchimp audiences, and once per day, a little after midnight UTC, Ours Privacy updates that tag to match the audience. Target the tag when you build a campaign or a segment in Mailchimp.
Before you start
- A Mailchimp account and a Mailchimp API key. Create the key in Mailchimp under Profile → Extras → API keys.
- The Audience ID of the Mailchimp audience you want to tag. Find it in Mailchimp under Audience → Settings → Audience name and defaults.
- An Audience Builder audience whose members have email addresses.
- A neutral Export Name. It becomes the tag name, and anyone with access to your Mailchimp account can see it.
Set up Mailchimp Audience Tags
- Add Mailchimp Audience Tags from Destinations.
- Enter your Mailchimp API key and Audience ID.
- Turn on Send email.
- Decide whether Ours Privacy should add people who are not already contacts in your Mailchimp audience (see New contacts below).
- Leave Remove tag when people leave the audience on to keep the tag in step with the audience, or turn it off to only add the tag (see Keeping the tag in step below).
- Save and publish the destination settings.
- Open the audience you want to tag, set its Export Name, accept the data-sharing terms, and select Mailchimp Audience Tags in Sync to Destinations.
After the first sync, the tag appears in Mailchimp under Audience → Tags. You can rename it in Mailchimp and Ours Privacy keeps tagging the same one.
New contacts
By default, Ours Privacy only tags people who are already contacts in your Mailchimp audience. Everyone else is skipped, and no contact or subscription status is changed.
Turn on Add new contacts to add missing people as new contacts before tagging them, with the status you choose:
- Subscribed, for people who have agreed to receive your marketing email.
- Pending (double opt-in). Mailchimp sends each new contact a confirmation email, and they become subscribed once they confirm.
- Transactional, for contacts who should not receive marketing campaigns.
Existing contacts always keep their current status, so someone who unsubscribed stays unsubscribed. New contacts count toward your Mailchimp plan's contact limit.
Only add contacts who have agreed to hear from you. Mailchimp's terms require permission for every contact you email, and do not allow purchased or third-party lists. Review Mailchimp's current policies before you turn this on.
What Mailchimp receives
Mailchimp receives your Export Name, as the tag name, and the email address of each member. Mailchimp matches contacts by email address, so emails are sent as plain addresses rather than hashed. Your audience conditions and internal audience name stay in Ours Privacy.
Keeping the tag in step
Each nightly run tags people who joined the audience. With Remove tag when people leave the audience on (the default), it also removes the tag from people who no longer match, so a campaign aimed at the tag stops reaching them after the next sync. Removing the tag does not unsubscribe, archive, or delete the contact, and their other tags and campaigns are unaffected.
Ours Privacy manages this tag. While removal is on, anyone you add to the tag by hand in Mailchimp is removed on the next sync. If a tag with the same name already exists when you first sync, Ours Privacy uses it, so start from a tag you are happy for Ours Privacy to manage. Turn removal off if you only want the tag added, and remove people in Mailchimp yourself.
If an audience ever matches no one, that day's sync is skipped and the tag keeps its members until the audience has members again.
Syncing happens once a day, so a campaign that Mailchimp already scheduled or sent is not affected by the next sync.
Members without a usable email address are skipped.
Next Steps
- Audience Destinations for the audience sync workflow.
- Syncing to Destinations for Export Names, terms, and delivery history.
- Compliance for audiences before you share an audience.
- Mailchimp to add contacts to Mailchimp as events happen.
Need help? Contact support@oursprivacy.com.
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