Introducing the new Copper and Mailchimp 2-way integration 🥳

Alright! We have been waiting for this and will take it for a spin.

Do we need to disconnect the old integration before connecting the new one?

Question - what if we we have more people in Copper than in Mailchimp?  Once I sync, will it just sync the existing people that are in Mailchimp that are in our Copper database?  Thank you!

@Alexis You do not need to disconnect the old one before connecting the new one. You can have both of them active if you like - it just means you’ll see two Mailchimp sections for each contact. Just keep in mind we’ll be removing the original version late this year.

@Jennifer Scerbo 

Question - what if we we have more people in Copper than in Mailchimp?  Once I sync, will it just sync the existing people that are in Mailchimp that are in our Copper database?  Thank you!

Great question! It wouldn’t sync right away - you will need to do some sort of change on those Copper records to “push” the sync. I recommend turning the Tag sync on and then tagging all your Copper contacts. This will trigger the syncing action. Afterwards you can delete the Tag in Settings > Customize > Manage Tags.

Once that’s done the integration will do the updates on an ongoing basis.

Does this replace the need for Outfunnel??

Great idea.

Except;

1. Sync rules: we need to be able to include conditions in Sync Rules so that we can control which records are sync’d to a Mailchimp List and which are excluded from a Mailchimp List based on one or more Copper Field (or Custom Field) values. We have been syncing from Copper to Mailchimp for more than 5 years now using our own integration; we can’t switch to the new Copper native integration without the ability to define sync conditions. Did Copper actually speak to companies who have extensive real-world experience with syncing Mailchimp from Copper? This integration feels like another ‘tech-led’ innovation from Copper rather than a business led innovation.
2. Bugs: having just setup and tested Copper’s new sync I’ve found it simply doesn’t work. For example a) when a Person or Lead (I’ve configured both for one way sync to Mailchimp) record is changed on Copper, the record is not created on Mailchimp. I’ve only been able to force record creation by using the “Add” button on the Mailchimp List shown in Copper. b) Field syncing isn’t working. I’ve setup the sync to map additional Copper fields to Mailchimp. They don’t come across.

Ho hum. Great idea. Poorly conceived and executed. Glad the Copper team are really excited about it though.

@PMRHardy 

Does this replace the need for Outfunnel??

Great question! It really depends on your use case. Can you provide more details on how you’re currently using Outfunnel?

When clicking “add” to list the box just refreshed and the contact hasn’t been added to the list. All the other features appear to be working on already added contacts. 

@Mark Sorry to hear you’re disappointed! We built this integration based on feedback we received from customers via our Copper Community and one-on-one, who requested a 2-way automatic sync with the ability to segment audiences inside Mailchimp with Copper fields and tags.

I have shared your feedback on sync rules with the Product team for future consideration. However, based on your use case, it might be worth keeping your existing custom integration.

If you’d still like to explore our integration, I’m happy to put you in touch with someone to troubleshoot your sync. Just let me know how you’d like to proceed. Thanks Mark!

@Avery gotcha. Is it possible that you were trying to add someone who previously unsubscribed in Mailchimp? Mailchimp does not allow us to re-add previously unsubscribed contacts, or to emails who returned a soft or hard bounce from a previous campaign.

Let me know - if that’s not it I’ll put you in touch with our technical support to troubleshoot. Thanks Avery!

Thank you Michelle. It was not prompting me for the client id at first so I was unsure but we are now fully set up. 

The sync won’t work for our business unless we can include conditional rules. SHame, we’ll have to stick with our custom integration, it would have been nice to do this natively direct from Copper.

Hello, we setup the new Mailchimp integration and now we see the mailchimp activities in the mailchimp section of Copper, but we don't see them in the activities section with the other emails. Is there a way to get the mailchimp emails to show up in the activities section?

Also, when someone replies to a mailchimp email, will that show up in the activities section of Copper?

Thanks!  - Trev

The experience so far has been good. We sent our first email from mailchimp and have great visibility into what’s been sent and how people are engaging. My current conundrum is 

I am trying to map the email status from mailchimp to a field in copper. I know I can see that info in the mailchimp integration but unfortunately if it's not also a field I cannot sort by the status. I'm having some trouble and wondering if you have coaching on if it needs to be a certain type of customer field (text field vs drop down etc?) Since I can’t filter by text field, ideally it would work as dropdown...

I made it a drop down and it's read only so that my team doesn't make changes, but the information is not mapping from mailchimp (I am testing on a single record, made changes to that record, and gave it a few hours to see if it was a timing issues).

@trev 

Is there a way to get the mailchimp emails to show up in the activities section?

With this current iteration, the Mailchimp activities will only show in the side panel and not in the main activity feed. But this is actually on our to-do list for later this year! Stay tuned :)

when someone replies to a mailchimp email, will that show up in the activities section of Copper?

It won’t; it would be treated the same as other Mailchimp activities. This is because Mailchimp treats those replies as “Conversations” in their platform, not as emails that could get picked up through our Gmail integration. It’s possible this could be included the improvements we have set for later this year.

@AlexAtBoostProfits 

I am trying to map the email status from mailchimp to a field in copper. I know I can see that info in the mailchimp integration but unfortunately if it's not also a field I cannot sort by the status. I'm having some trouble and wondering if you have coaching on if it needs to be a certain type of customer field (text field vs drop down etc?) Since I can’t filter by text field, ideally it would work as dropdown...

I made it a drop down and it's read only so that my team doesn't make changes, but the information is not mapping from mailchimp (I am testing on a single record, made changes to that record, and gave it a few hours to see if it was a timing issues).

To clarify - when you say “status” are you referring to the whether they’re subscribed or unsubscribed?

So, in terms of the custom field you would create in Copper for this - you can use either a text field or dropdown with options for “Subscribed and Unsubscribed.” I recommend a dropdown since there’s only two options here.

You mentioned you created the custom field already - did you update the field mapping in the integration?If not, here’s how:

1. Install the integration and set up two-way sync (sound like you’ve already done this)
2. Create that custom dropdown in Copper (sounds like you’ve also done this!)
3. Map that custom field to its equivalent Mailchimp field. I’ll put some screenshots below of how to do that.

Open the integration and go to Sync > Field Mapping.

Click the gear icon for you the Mailchimp → Copper sync direction.

Under “Select Mailchimp Field” choose Status. Under “Select Copper Field” choose that custom dropdown you created. Click Add and also click the Save button!

That’s it. The next time someone changes statuses in Mailchimp, it will automatically populate your custom field.

Anyways, let me know if you completed these steps. If you did then and it’s still not populating then we might want to dig deeper.

Also, you mentioned this:

I can’t filter by text field

That will be changing very soon... ;)

@Mark I totally understand. On the bright side, we do have plans to continue improving the integration. So it’s good to hear your feedback now so that we can incorporate it into the planning process. 

When will the mailchimp emails show up in the users activity feed?  We need this for leads, people and companies. 

Because mailchimp is not showing up under users activities, I am not able to use the filters section in order to filter by last contacted date.

When I click on filter in the people section, I want to be able to sort by last contacted date

I don't believe copper is counting these mailchimp emails as a customer touch point (contact) so it's not letting me filter out the people that didn't get the mailchimp email. 

I have mulitple audiences in mailchimp. Do I set it up with one specifically to sync but they will all sync up to the person? If I add a new one into copper, does it go into the audience base off tag? How does that work?

Thanks!

Mark brings up some excellent points. We have many contacts in our Copper database and we send Mailchimp emails to only a portion of our contacts. Reading through the Mailchimp integration instructions, it appears that ALL Copper contacts will automatically sync with Mailchimp. [Please correct me if I’m misunderstanding this]. We have no reason to share ALL contacts with Mailchimp and if we were to share all contacts, it would force us into a higher tier Mailchimp subscription that we don’t need.

We send targeted smaller campaigns that require multiple filters, some of which aren’t available in Copper’s basic filter options. This requires us to use Excel to finish up our filters after exporting contacts from Copper, so we can then import contacts into Mailchimp. It’s a real pain! We don’t send campaigns frequently enough to justify the cost of a custom solution, so we make do with our manual workaround. For this new Mailchimp integration to be useful, there has to be a filter and sync management system on the Copper side. Also, it would be great if the Copper development team could spend some time developing more filter options inside of Copper. For example, there is currently no way to filter out contacts who do not have an email address. Why would you want to send those contacts to Mailchimp?

Pretty sure you can get that functionality if you use Outfunnel alongside the Mailchimp integration, which will also calculate lead scoring and additional website analytics functionality. They compliment eachother quite well.

Jumping on this thread. I am REALLY excited about the 2 way sync and am finally getting around to implementing it. While the idea of an auto-sync from Copper to Mailchimp for all of our People records is wicked cool, it will eventually force us into a higher Mailchimp contact count bracket. I would like to request the ability to disable this feature in settings. A simple on or off. Would be a quick fix while the Copper team works out a long-term solution.

Thanks for putting out a great product and listening to our many requests and varied needs!

@cae787  glad you’re excited! The Product team is investigating some of the features mentioned in this thread.

In terms of an on/off button - we already have that!  Actually, we have two options for turning “off” a sync:

• Pause - like it implies, it stops the sync but retains the sync settings you have so that you can easily turn it back on in the future.
• Reset - this completely wipes out any existing syncs and field mappings. So this is more for starting over.

So, if you want to sync contacts in batches, you could:

1. Turn on your sync
2. Trigger the sync on those contacts by making a change on their records (e.g. adding a Tag, assuming you have Tag sync enabled)
3. Check that they landed in Mailchimp
4. Turn off the sync 

Let me know if that addresses the “quick fix” solution you were thinking of!