Migrate from Adobe Marketo Engage to Mailchimp

Marketo Persons (internally called Leads) map directly to Mailchimp Contacts. Email address is the dedupe key. Standard fields (firstName, lastName, email, phone, title) map to Mailchimp standard merge fields. Custom Person fields require custom merge field creation in Mailchimp; we handle the schema mapping during scoping. All contacts are imported into the appropriate Mailchimp Audience per the Marketo Static List membership they held at extraction time.

Marketo Company records have no direct Mailchimp equivalent because Mailchimp does not have a Company/Account object. We offer two strategies during scoping: (a) Company name and industry as custom merge fields on the Contact record, or (b) Company name as a Mailchimp Tag applied to every Contact linked to that Company. The customer selects the strategy based on how they plan to use company data for segmentation in Mailchimp.

Marketo Opportunities have no Mailchimp equivalent. Opportunity stage and amount do not map to a native Mailchimp object. We offer migration of the most recent Opportunity stage and deal value as custom merge fields on the related Contact, or as Tags prefixed with Opportunity metadata (e.g., tag dealname_stage) for segmentation filtering.

Marketo Static Lists are the most direct object-level mapping in this migration. Each Marketo Static List becomes a separate Mailchimp Audience. Person membership in a Static List maps directly to Contact membership in the corresponding Audience. We extract Static List membership at extraction time using the Bulk Extract API and create the Mailchimp Audience before importing contacts to ensure immediate list assignment.

Marketo Programs (Email Programs, Event Programs, Engagement Programs, Default Programs) carry period costs, tags, and channel assignments with no direct Mailchimp equivalent. We extract the Program name, channel, tags, and period cost as a structured metadata document. Channel assignments migrate as Tags in Mailchimp. The customer uses this document to rebuild Programs as Customer Journeys or regular campaigns post-migration.

Marketo Custom Objects (one-to-many via single link field or many-to-many via an intermediary object) have no relational equivalent in Mailchimp. We extract Custom Object field values for each Person and decompose them into flat custom merge fields on the Mailchimp Contact. We note that this flattens the one-to-many relationship — only the most recent or most relevant Custom Object record's values transfer per Contact, per the customer's priority definition during scoping.

Marketo Standard Activities (Filled Out Form, Visit Webpage, Click Link on Webpage, Email Open, Email Click) store behavioral event history. Mailchimp stores the most recent engagement state per contact, not a full event timeline. We extract the most recent N activities per Person as tags (e.g., lastOpenedEmail_2024-01-15) and the form fill field values as merge fields, preserving what is actionable in Mailchimp's segmentation rather than the full history.

Marketo Engagement Programs with up to 25 Streams and 125 content items per stream have no direct Mailchimp equivalent. We extract the Engagement Program structure (stream names, cadence, content items, and membership dates) as a structured written inventory. Mailchimp Customer Journeys are the destination analog; the inventory document maps each Marketo Stream to a recommended Customer Journey step sequence for the admin to rebuild.

Marketo lead and contact scoring models (demographic and behavioral) are configuration, not data. We extract scoring rules as structured metadata: field criteria, point values, and grade thresholds. Mailchimp does not have native lead scoring. We deliver a scoring rule inventory document that the admin can use to design Mailchimp segments that approximate the scoring tiers (e.g., segment for Grade A leads = specific merge field value combinations) or to evaluate a third-party scoring add-on.