How to Link Mailchimp and Distil

Pairing Mailchimp's popular marketing execution platform with Distil's powerful insights and data analysis capabilities is the definition of having your cake and eating it too. You can also use Distil to save money on your Mailchimp subscription, and effectively manage your GDPR obligations.

You can pull your Mailchimp Audiences into Distil, capture a range of activities via Distil Tracking, target specific groups of Customers with our powerful Segmentation capability, and then push actionable insights back out into Mailchimp via Destinations. You can also combine Mailchimp's excellent Templates with customer data and Tracking IDs from Distil to create marketing campaigns that are automatically tracked within Distil.

Step-by-Step Guide

We've created a series of step-by-step guides to get you up and running in no time:

1. Read the information below on Key Distil Concepts and Other Considerations - a skim will do for now as we'll come back to these topics later.
2. Create and test a new connection between Distil and Mailchimp.
3. Pull Customer data from Mailchimp into Distil.
4. Push the Customer data in your Segment into Mailchimp, including creating a Customer Segment.
5. Use Distil's URL Identification Token within Mailchimp Templates to send trackable emails to your Customers.

Key Distil Concepts

Before you get started we recommend getting familiar with some key Distil concepts:

• Customer Tracking ID:
  • Each Customer in Distil (including those brought in from Mailchimp) is assigned a unique ID, this is explained in our article on Customers in Distil.
  • This Tracking ID is key to consolidating the Customer's activity across all of your marketing campaigns and platforms.
  • We recommend pushing this ID into Mailchimp and pairing it with our URL Identification Token to easily and accurately track marketing attribution.
• URL Identification Token:
  • Deploying Distil's URL Identification Token within your Mailchimp activities allows you to accurately track Customer activity without a login event.
  • The URL Identification Token uses the Customer Tracking ID covered in the section above.
• GDPR and Marketing Consent Consolidation
  • While you can manage GDPR and marketing consent within Mailchimp, this can be a complex process with many data sources...
  • Read our article on GDPR and Marketing Consent Consolidation, and make an informed decision about how to manage your obligations.

Other Considerations

Mailchimp Customer Records and Audiences

Mailchimp stores Customer Records in Audiences (formally Lists). Each Mailchimp Audience is a list in its own right: there is no single Customer list. If a Customer Record is stored in two lists then that is two unique Customer Records with their own attributes and subscribed status.

Mailchimp Pricing

Mailchimp prices by the Customer Record. This is standard practice in email marketing execution tools. However where Mailchimp differs slightly is that it charges by the Customer Record per Audience. So if you have the same Customer in two (or more) different Mailchimp Audiences, then you will be charged twice for that Customer.

Our customers have used Distil to consolidate over 400 Mailchimp Audiences into a single one, saving a significant sum on their Mailchimp costs as a result. 

If managing your Mailchimp cost is an issue for you, consider which other Customer Attributes can be used to restrict the size of your Mailchimp Customer Segment. For example you could use the A.I. Tag Engagement Recency to filter out Customers you've not seen in over a year. 

Next Step

Create a Connection to Mailchimp