Successful migration from Mailchimp to Klaviyo

How do you migrate from Mailchimp to Klaviyo?

You came here for the steps for a good migration! This guide will help you.

If you have decided to switch to Klaviyo, it is very important that you do this properly, for example, to be able to start immediately with a good send reputation from Klaviyo, but also to make sure that if you have extra data fields in Mailchimp, you don't forget to transfer them.

Klaviyo has a built-in integration with Mailchimp that streamlines the migration process as you move from Mailchimp to Klaviyo. This is meant to be a one-off sync until you transfer your data to Klaviyo. After you've fully made the switch to Klaviyo, we recommend that you remove your Mailchimp integration. Please note that extra fields in Mailchimp are not included by default.

We also have a general checklist with all the points about migrating to Klaviyo from another email service provider (ESP), which you can find here.

Checklist

Migrating from Mailchimp to Klaviyo requires four key steps:

1. Integrate your e-commerce platform with Klaviyo
2. Integrate Mailchimp with Klaviyo
3. Migrate your email templates from Mailchimp to Klaviyo
4. Sunset your Mailchimp account

1. Integrate Mailchimp with Klaviyo

Integrating your Mailchimp account with Klaviyo takes over all your contact information, including when contacts received, opened, and clicked on emails.

First, you need to get a Mailchimp API key. We recommend creating a new key specific to the Klaviyo integration, but you can use an existing key if you want. You can get your Mailchimp API key by logging into Mailchimp, clicking on your account name in the bottom left corner, and then going to Account > Extras > API keys to navigate.

Click Create a Key and then copy the key.

Once you've obtained your Mailchimp API key, go to the tab Integrations from your Klaviyo account. Look for Mailchimp in the list here All Integrations. Click Add Integration and paste the Mailchimp API key.

After pasting your API key, click to enter the Advanced Options to view:

• Collect open and click data for Mailchimp campaigns - check this option to synchronize Mailchimp engagement
• Create Klaviyo lists from Mailchimp lists - check this option to sync all your existing Mailchimp lists
• Only sync specific lists - check this option to sync specific Mailchimp lists only. You'll be asked to choose which lists to sync.

When reviewing the Mailchimp documentation, note that MailChimp sometimes refers to “lists” as “audience”. A customer's engagement data in Mailchimp is linked to the Mailchimp list they were part of when they received a campaign. If you move a customer to another Mailchimp list after they have received a campaign, the engagement data for that customer does not follow the customer to the new list. This means that Mailchimp's engagement data may not be complete if you switch your customer from their original list to another list after receiving a Mailchimp campaign.

If you Only sync specific lists selects into Advanced Settings, you must provide all list IDs that campaigns were previously sent to. Even if another synchronized list includes the same contact, you won't see full engagement data for that campaign if a campaign wasn't originally submitted to that list.

Note: Klaviyo will only sync campaigns with the “Sent” status. Campaigns with the “Sending” status are not synchronized.

After you get on Connect to Mailchimp Once clicked, the data will be resynchronized within a minute or two.

Synchronization frequency

After the first day of integration, Mailchimp's data is synchronized with Klaviyo as follows:

• Existing lists are synced every 30 minutes
• Existing campaigns are synchronized every hour
• Every 6 hours, Klaviyo checks for new lists and/or campaigns. Once a new list or campaign is identified, it will sync every 30 minutes or 1 hour, respectively.

View your Mailchimp details

Klaviyo retrieves the following data from Mailchimp:

• When someone has received, opened, or clicked on a specific email
• When someone subscribes to a synchronized Mailchimp list
• Emails that have unsubscribed or been bounced (these will be added to your suppression list at Klaviyo)
• Existing lists in Mailchimp
• Mailchimp contact reviews

If a profile already exists in Klaviyo as a Active Profile before you add the Mailchimp integration, it is not suppressed if it is suppressed in Mailchimp. For example, if you have a profile that is synced through your e-commerce integration before adding the Mailchimp integration, and this person has logged out of Mailchimp, they will not be suppressed in Klaviyo because they already exist as an active profile. To suppress these contacts, you can export them from Mailchimp as a CSV and they upload to your suppression list in Klaviyo. Only net new unsubscribed contacts are suppressed in Klaviyo with the integration.

Note that only contact names and email addresses are synchronized; see below to migrate via custom properties (tags) that can be added to contact profiles in Mailchimp.

Deleting a contact in Mailchimp does not delete it in Klaviyo. However, if someone is added to a Mailchimp list, they will be added to Klaviyo within an hour. Klaviyo receives historical data from Mailchimp for the past 90 days; if you sync a large number of contacts from Mailchimp, this may differ.

The integration synchronizes data for lists every 30 minutes. For campaigns, it fetches data every 30 minutes on the first day and checks less frequently as time goes by.

Mailchimp metrics are synchronized from campaigns that have taken place in the past 90 days. If a campaign is still shipping, Klaviyo will not sync the following metrics; these metrics are only synchronized for campaigns that have been sent.

Clicked email

The Mailchimp Clicked E-mail metric tracks email click events that are synchronized from Mailchimp. To further segment this metric and see which contacts clicked on which specific URLs in your emails, click the Clicked Email metric within Metrics in your Analytics tab and then use the advanced filters option to filter by URL.

Opened email

The Opened Email Mailchimp's metric tracks open email events that have been synchronized from Mailchimp.

Received email

Klaviyo synchronizes a Received Email Mailchimp event every time someone successfully receives an email sent from Mailchimp (meaning the email has been delivered to their inbox).

When lists are imported from Mailchimp (as specified in your integration settings), Klaviyo also synchronizes a Mailchimp Subscribed to list event for each member of the list. This gives you the ability to segment profiles imported from MailChimp based on their MailChimp opt-in timestamp.

Subscribed to list

The Subscribed to List Mailchimp's metric indicates when a subscriber signs up for a Mailchimp list. You can find the Mailchimp Subscribed to List metric under Metrics in your Analytics tab. Event metadata includes the Mailchimp List Name and MailChimp List ID.

Importing Mailchimp tags to Klaviyo

If you use Mailchimp tags to label and organize your contacts, you can manually export and import these tags to Klaviyo. Klaviyo's built-in Mailchimp integration doesn't sync any of your tags.

Start by navigating to Manage Contactos > Tags in Mailchimp to view specific tags you want to sync. If you click the dropdown next to View, you get the “Export as CSV” option to export your segment from Mailchimp. Use the Mailchimp guide for more information about the exporting contacts with specific tags.

After exporting your data from Mailchimp, you can import these as custom properties to Klaviyo. Custom properties are linked to your Klaviyo profiles and you can create segments based on specific properties, or use them to add filters to your flow or to dynamically display data in your emails.

2. Migrate your email templates from Mailchimp to Klaviyo

Klaviyo has an intuitive drag and drop template builder that you can use to recreate your Mailchimp templates. We recommend using this method to build your templates because it ensures that they are mobile-optimized, responsive, and easy to edit and iterate.

However, if you don't have time to recreate your Mailchimp templates with Klaviyo's template builder, it's possible to export your email templates from Mailchimp and import them to Klaviyo.

This process includes editing and updating the raw HTML of the email template. If you want to use Klaviyo's drag and drop editor to recreate your templates instead, check out Klaviyo's guide to learning how to use Klaviyo's template editor.

Export your template from Mailchimp

In your Mailchimp account, navigate to the template you want to migrate to Klaviyo. Select Exports axle HTML in the dropdown next to the template name.

You'll be asked to confirm your export and an HTML file will be stored on your computer.

Replace Template Tags

Klaviyo and Mailchimp use different template tags to embed dynamic content into your emails. For example, the “first name” tag is different in Mailchimp than in Klaviyo, so it's important to replace Mailchimp-specific tags with the corresponding Klaviyo tags.

The most important tag to swap is the unsubscribe tag from receiving emails. Before importing your template into Klaviyo, you must add a {% unsubscribe%} tag, because Klaviyo does not allow you to upload HTML templates that do not have unsubscribe tags unless they are for transactional emails.

To edit the tags in your template, open the HTML file in a text editor, such as Sublime Text. Below is a table of other commonly used Mailchimp tags and their associated Klaviyo tags.

Mailchimp Tag

Klaviyo Tag

*|UNSUB|*

{% unsubscribe%}

*|NAME|*

{{first_name}}

*|NAME|*

{{last_name}}

*|LIST:COMPANY|*

{{organization.name}}

*|EMAIL|*

{{email}}

*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*

{% manage_preferences%}

*|MC:SUBJECT|*

This is the email subject line, which is set by email in the Klaviyo template editor.

*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*

This is the sample email text, which is set by email in the Klaviyo template editor.

Learn more about template tags in Klaviyo.

After swapping the Klaviyo tag tags, you can save your HTML file.

Import your template to Klaviyo

In your Klaviyo account, navigate to the tab E-mail Templates and select Create Template. Then select Import your Template. Here, you will be asked to select the HTML file on your computer and you can upload the file you just saved.

You can see an example of what your email template will look like in the tab Preview. Please note that in the future, you will need to edit the HTML directly to change the template. If you're interested in converting the template into a drag and drop template, you can you can follow these steps.

Sunset your Mailchimp account

If you start deleting or cleaning contacts in Mailchimp before deleting the integration, those contacts become suppresses at Klaviyo. Once your Mailchimp account is securely terminated, remove the integration before deleting or cleaning Mailchimp contacts that you don't want to suppress in Klaviyo. Lists and profiles that are synchronized from Mailchimp to Klaviyo are not deleted in Klaviyo if you disable or remove the Mailchimp integration.

Once you've transferred all your data to Klaviyo, there are three important steps you can take to make sure you no longer need your Mailchimp account:

1. Make sure your signup forms and list of growth tools point to Klaviyo, not Mailchimp
2. Create your existing automations as flows in Klaviyo
3. Remove Mailchimp integration

Signup forms and tools to grow your list

If you have signup forms or signup form campaigns in your Mailchimp account, you want to make sure they are recreated in Klaviyo so that your list continues to grow in Klaviyo instead of Mailchimp. You can't refer forms created in Mailchimp to Klaviyo. Instead, you can:

1. The Klaviyo Signup Form Builder use to recreate forms from scratch
2. Use an external list growth tool that integrates with Klaviyo
3. Integrate your custom form via your e-commerce platform

If you're using an external list growth tool instead of Mailchimp's built-in form builder, make sure it syncs to Klaviyo. Klaviyo can be integrated with a number of external list growth tools. Scan Klaviyo's list of integrations to find the tool you're using. If you don't see it listed, consider using Klaviyo's own Signup Form Builder to create your forms, or switching to another third-party tool.

Please note that all Klaviyo lists are double-opt-in by default. To change a list to a one-time opt-in, go to that section of Klaviyo's Double Opt-in Process Guide.

If you're using a custom-coded form, there are two ways to ensure that these contacts are synchronized with Klaviyo. One option is to make sure that your custom form synchronizes new subscribers directly to your e-commerce platform and that your e-commerce store is integrated with your Klaviyo account. The second option is to have the form point directly to your Klaviyo account by updating the Form Action URL. To find the Form Action URL in your Klaviyo account, go to your Lists & Segments tab and click the list you want to add your new subscribers to. Click on the Subscribe Pages tab and copy the URL from the right side of the screen.

After you've changed all your signup forms to point to Klaviyo, wait a few days and review your lists in Mailchimp. If you notice that subscribers are still being added to these lists, at least one more form will probably need to be swapped.

Next, you'll want to disable your signup forms for Mailchimp. To do this, go to the code of the page where you installed the form and remove the code that starts with

and ends with

Email automations

Klaviyo refers to email automations as flows and enables much more advanced and targeted series. It's important to recreate them in Klaviyo so you don't have to keep using Mailchimp to send triggered emails.

If you're switching from Mailchimp, it might be a good time to refresh and update your automated messages. The two flows that we recommend you put live in Klaviyo as soon as possible are your Welcome Series and Abandoned Cart flows. A welcome series is especially important for attracting new subscribers, and abandoned cart flows have the highest ROI of any other type of flow.

Once your Klaviyo flows are live, you'll want to turn off all your automations in Mailchimp to make sure you don't double-email people. To do this, click Pause & Edit in addition to the specific campaign. Then click Pause in the pop-up.

3. Remove the Mailchimp Integration

Once you've had all your list growing tools directed to your Klaviyo account, paused Mailchimp automations, and put your Klaviyo flows live, you can remove the Mailchimp integration. Before you remove your Mailchimp integration, make sure everything works as expected. Enter a test email into your signup form and other tools to grow your list, leave a cart and sign up for your newsletter to activate a welcome series. Go to the tab Profiles in your Klaviyo account to ensure that the information in the profile reflects appropriate communication. If the list you're signing up for is double opt-in, you'll need to confirm your email address first.

Once you've taken these steps and migrated completely to Klaviyo, you can go ahead and remove your Mailchimp integration. Click on the Integrations tab and select Settings under your Mailchimp integration. Select Remove in the top right corner and confirm that you want to remove the integration.

4. Submit your first campaign with Klaviyo

Once your Klaviyo account is integrated with your store and all your data has been transferred from Mailchimp, you can send your first campaign with Klaviyo. In order to achieve the highest possible deliverability, we recommend sending the first 4 weeks on Klaviyo to a highly engaged group of contacts. This ensures that you're getting started with Klaviyo on the right foot and training inbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc. to place your emails in the inbox.

Klaviyo gets the “Mailchimp Ratings” from contacts, who rate a contact's level of engagement on a 1-5 star scale. A contact with 5 stars is considered highly engaged, while a contact with only 1 star is considered uninvolved.

For more information about how Mailchimp ratings are calculated Refer to Mailchimp documentation.

To send out your first campaign, you'll first need to build a segment of engaged subscribers. Klaviyo offers a standard Engaged (3 months) segment that will appear in the Lists & Segments tab. You can use this as a starting point and then reduce the time frame to 30 days and add historical Mailchimp engagement criteria to ensure you reach the right audience.

After you have built this segment, you can go through the steps for creating and sending a campaign.

1. Send 4 weeks exclusively to your “highly engaged” segment.
2. Monitor your open rates using the Engagement Report.
3. As your open rate rises above 20%, expand the time frame conditions of this segment and continue to follow the open rates.

Glossary

Below is a list of commonly used Mailchimp terms, along with their Klaviyo counterparts.

Mailchimp Term

Klaviyo Term

Automation

Flow: an automated sequence that is initiated by a specific trigger and then includes one or more steps. Flows can be built to send emails to recipients, or they can easily apply certain actions; e.g. abandoned cart, welcome series, update a profile property.

Email Campaign

Campaign: a one-off email sent to a list or segment of customers; e.g. product launch or sales email.

Tags

Custom Properties: custom values that can be added to contact profiles and are available for use in segments and flows; e.g. gender, birthday, product interest.

Advanced Segment

Segment: a dynamic group of people limited by a series of conditions. Segments don't have to be based on a specific list; e.g. anyone who purchased more than 6 months ago and hasn't bought since. No matter what subscription you have, you can use this feature to add a wide variety of terms.

Signup Form Campaign

Signup form: an embedded, pop-up, or flyout email and data collection tool.

Ad Campaign

Facebook Advertising Integration: an integration between Klaviyo and Facebook that allows you to display targeted ads to audiences on Facebook and Instagram.

Cleaned Contacts

Suppressed profiles: contacts that have unsubscribed, marked an email as spam, hard-bounced, or manually suppressed. It is not possible to email these contacts.

FAQ

If I delete people in Mailchimp, will they be deleted in Klaviyo?

No.

If I unsubscribe someone in Mailchimp, will that person be logged out in Klaviyo?

No. If someone is oppressed in only one Mailchimp audience, they will be removed from the list in Klaviyo, but not globally in Klaviyo. Contacts that are already synced via another integration (i.e., your e-commerce integration) won't be suppressed, even if they've signed out in Mailchimp. To suppress these contacts, you can export them from Mailchimp as a CSV and they upload to your suppression list in Klaviyo.

If I unsubscribe in Klaviyo, will that person be logged out in Mailchimp?

No.

When I add someone to a list in Mailchimp, will they be added to a list in Klaviyo?

Yes, after 15 minutes if the address has the status “subscribed” or “unsubscribed”. If the email address in Mailchimp is “pending” (added with double opt-in but hasn't confirmed its subscription yet) or “cleaned” (the address has been bounced and removed from the list), they are not synchronized to Klaviyo. When an address confirms their subscription, they go from “pending” to “subscribed” in Mailchimp and are synchronized with Klaviyo the next periodic sync.

When I add someone to a list in Klaviyo, will they be added to a list in Mailchimp?

No.

How often is my Mailchimp data synchronized with Klaviyo?

Your lists are synchronized every 30 minutes and your unsubscriptions, opens, and clicks are synchronized every 30 minutes on the first day of your integration and are less likely to sync over time, as you should be fully migrated after your first few days.

How often do my Shopify store orders sync with Klaviyo?

Orders are synchronized with Klaviyo in real time.

How often are my Bigcommerce store's orders synchronized with Klaviyo?

Orders are synchronized with Klaviyo in real time.

Does the integration bring in all my campaign history?

Klaviyo synchronizes the last 90 days of campaign history. This is sufficient data to compile a list of good engagement criteria.

Why should a company keep Mailchimp and Klaviyo? Why not switch entirely to Klaviyo and import everything here?

We recommend switching completely to Klaviyo. You can start by integrating with Mailchimp. Next, review the key guidelines outlined in this article.

Does Klaviyo offer something similar to the Mailchimp rating?

Klaviyo does not currently offer anything equivalent to a Mailchimp rating. Instead, you can use Klaviyo's segmentation builder to create an engaged segment that matches your specific definition of engaged.

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