While Pipedrive’s native Mailchimp integration does make it easy for you to add Pipedrive contacts to Mailchimp, the data about opens and clicks does not loop back to Pipedrive. It’s ‘stuck’ in Mailchimp.
One of the things Outfunnel allows you to do is to “complete the loop” and show email engagement in Pipedrive -- right where it's most useful for your sales team.
Other things Pipedrive users often struggle with:
Some integrations only sync Person fields to Mailchimp (and not Organization fields)
Handing duplicate contacts in Pipedrive and archived contacts in Mailchimp is suboptimal by other tools
Other integrations create a new contact in Mailchimp if the email address changes in Pipedrive, effectively creating a duplicate contact in your marketing tool.
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How the 2-way Pipedrive-Mailchimp integration works
Make all Pipedrive contacts or subset(s) you define with filters available in a Mailchimp Audience along with your fields and custom fields.
Keep the two databases in sync going forward. E.g. if a custom field is updated, this is recorded in Mailchimp automatically.
When people open or click on email campaigns, this data will be recorded on contact profiles in Pipedrive. Outfunnel supports Mailchimp single email campaigns, automations, email journeys and A/B tests.
New Mailchimp subscribers can be copied to Pipedrive as Contacts. Alternatively, new contacts can be copied to Pipedrive only when they open or click on an email campaign.
Set up contact sync
Sync contacts from Pipedrive to Mailchimp and create contacts in Pipedrive from new Mailchimp subscribers.
Watch this quick integration how-to video or follow the steps below.
1. Authenticate your apps. Head to Outfunnel > App connector, select Pipedrive and Mailchimp and authenticate as per on-screen instructions if you haven't done so already.
2. Select the connection type. Click on Connect and choose Contact sync as the connection type
3. Set up contact sync rules. You can set up the contact sync from Pipedrive to Mailchimp or Mailchimp to Pipedrive.
Sync contacts from Pipedrive to Mailchimp.
Choose whether to sync all Pipedrive contacts or only contacts you’ve defined with a Pipedrive Person filter and select the Mailchimp audience you'd like to sync them to. Outfunnel keeps fields up to date, subscribes contacts that match the filter to Mailchimp and unsubscribes them when they stop matching. As you are syncing contacts, not Deals, then only Pipedrive People filters are visible in Outfunnel. Learn how to set up Pipedrive People filters.
You can sync different Pipedrive filters to different Mailchimp Audiences (eg. separate email lists for different regions or pipeline stages) or you can sync multiple Pipedrive filters to the same Mailchimp Audience (eg. a filter with open Deals for each sales rep, all synced to one big newsletter Audience)
Sync contacts from Mailchimp to Pipedrive.
Choose an audience that you'd like to record new subscribers to Pipedrive as contacts and specify the contact owner. Once the contact is created in Pipedrive, a "Contact Created" activity is added under the contact profile.Outfunnel creates contacts in Pipedrive. Lead creation support is coming soon.
Contact import functionality in Mailchimp is not supported and does not trigger the contact sync
4. Set up field mapping. Navigate to the field mapping step to select which fields or custom fields you’d like the sync to consider. You can choose up to 30 fields from all your Person and Organization fields and custom fields.
5. Activate the connection
⏱️ Sync frequency
The first sync can take up to 15 minutes based on the number of contacts in the sync.
From there Outfunnel syncs field changes instantly but checks for new contacts/removed contacts every 2 hours. You can trigger an immediate sync if you click on the “Sync now” button (it might take up to 15 minutes for the data to appear)
🏁 Initial sync
Contacts are linked based on the email address. Existing Mailchimp fields are overwritten with Pipedrive values.
A new contact is created if a contact with the same email address is not found.
Manually unsubscribed and archived contacts are resubscribed. To avoid resubscribing these contacts, delete them from Mailchimp or remove them from the Pipedrive filter.
Bounced and opted-out contacts are not resubscribed.
Contacts are linked based on the email address. If multiple contacts are found with the same email address then the link is made with the oldest contact.
↔️ Continuous sync
When a contact stops matching the rules all updates will stop and they will be unsubscribed but they will not be deleted from Mailchimp.
Outfunnel only updates Mailchimp if any details change for the contact that is in sync.
Example 1: if any contacts are archived in Mailchimp after the initial sync but nothing changes in the CRM then they will not be resubscribed.
Example 2: if any fields are changed in Mailchimp after the initial sync but nothing changes in the CRM then this field will not change to the CRM value in Mailchimp
Contacts do not get unsubscribed from Mailchimp if you remove the contact sync rule or change the target segment.
Set up engagement sync
Outfunnel supports recording engagement from Mailchimp single email campaigns, automation, email journeys, and A/B tests. If you've already set up a connection, skip to the second step.
1. Authenticate your apps. Head to Outfunnel > App connector, select Pipedrive and Mailchimp and authenticate as per on-screen instructions if you haven't done so already.
2. Select the connection type. Click on Connect and choose Engagement sync as the connection type
3. Choose the audience. Choose the Mailchimp audiences for which you’d like to record email engagement (opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc).
4. Define how engagement gets recorded. Then define how you’d like email activities like opens, clicks, bounces, or unsubscribes recorded in Pipedrive – or simply use our default settings.
5. Set up field mapping. When Outfunnel syncs an engagement for a contact that does not yet exist in Pipedrive, a new contact can optionally be created with the defined field mapping. Navigate to the field mapping step to select which fields or custom fields you’d like the sync to consider. You can turn off creating contacts from email engagements on the same page.
6. Activate. Activate the connection. By default, Outfunnel records engagement from emails that have been sent after activating the connection but you can also choose to sync engagement events from the last 30-days when activating the connection.
💡 Sync frequency. The sync runs every 2 hours automatically or you can trigger an instant sync anytime by clicking on Sync now.
💡 Unsubscribe recording. Outfunnel only records end-user initiated unsubscribes in Pipedrive and manual unsubscribes in Mailchimp are not recorded. When a contact is unsubscribed manually but they still match a filter in Pipedrive that is targeted by an automation, then Outfunnel will resubscribe them in Mailchimp. If you'd like to manually remove a contact in Mailchimp, they need to be permanently deleted under the contact profile in Mailchimp
Learn more about the best ways to manage unsubscribes and bounces.
💡 Activities are added to my calendar. Please note that if you've set up calendar sync in Pipedrive, then all activities are automatically added to your Google or Outlook calendar. To turn this off simply uncheck Outfunnel activity types in Pipedrive > Company Settings > Calendar Sync
These are the types that Outfunnel creates: Newsletter Sent, Newsletter Opened, Newsletter Clicked, Newsletter Bounce, Newsletter Unsubscribe, Contact Created, Newsletter Reply, Form Submitted, Visited Website
💡 Email activity is registered on a Contact level as well as a (single) Deal level. When you send an email campaign to someone, or they open or click in an email, this is registered independently of the deal stage or pipeline in their Contact profile. This is also registered in a Deal in the pipeline you can define in the Mailchimp to Pipedrive Automation setup screen.
💡 Notifications. If you’d like to receive email notifications about people opening and/or clicking your newsletters, you’ll need to turn on Email notifications feature in Pipedrive. (See how). Once enabled, each user can turn on Email notifications by going to Settings > Personal > Preferences > Notifications.
PS. We also offer retrospective sync on demand for an additional cost. Please refer to this article.
See what has synced
Once the connection is live, navigate to the Status tab to see how many contacts are in-sync, how many are errored (and why), and when the last sync ran.
Tips, observations, and useful definitions:
Contact sync
💡 Pre-create field values. Single and multiple option fields need to have the options pre-created in Mailchimp and Pipedrive (case insensitive)
💡 Best results with a new Audience. We recommend setting up a brand new Mailchimp Audience to ensure everything works flawlessly, but syncing data to an already existing Audience works as well in most cases.
💡 Duplicate contacts. If you have duplicate contacts in Pipedrive, then Outfunnel only syncs the first instance of the contact to Mailchimp. This is because Mailchimp only accepts one unique email per audience.
💡 Merging contacts. Outfunnel supports merging contacts with the same email. After you've merged a contact you may see the contact getting unsubscribed from Mailchimp if the contact you merged to was not in sync but they will get resubscribed in the next sync given that the email address is the same.
💡 Contacts with multiple emails. Outfunnel only syncs the first email address of the contact to Mailchimp. Other addresses will be ignored.
💡 Make edits in Pipedrive only. Outfunnel currently treats Pipedrive as the “single source of truth”, and any changes you make in Pipedrive will be reflected in Mailchimp. This doesn’t work the other way around. If you’d like to edit the contents of a field in Mailchimp, please make the changes in Pipedrive and let Outfunnel take care of syncing this to Mailchimp.
Please note that multiple selection fields are synced to Mailchimp as a text field as Mailchimp does not offer this field type.
Do you use web forms to collect leads to your lists? See the following integrations to automate lead capture sync to Pipedrive:
Don't see your preferred web forms listed above? Browse the upcoming connections and sign up for early access.