Migrate from BookingKoala to Mailchimp

BookingKoala customers map 1:1 to Mailchimp contacts. Every customer record becomes one contact with email address, name, phone, and address fields populating the standard Mailchimp contact schema. Duplicate email addresses in BookingKoala are flagged before import — Mailchimp requires unique emails per contact.

BookingKoala assigns each customer a type — one-time user, recurring user, or abandoned-cart lead. Mailchimp has no native customer-type field, so we apply a tag per booking status (e.g., tag: 'recurring-customer', tag: 'abandoned-cart') and create a Mailchimp Segment filtering by those tags. The segment logic must be configured in Mailchimp after migration.

Individual bookings have no direct Mailchimp equivalent. We apply service-category tags (e.g., tag: 'booked-house-cleaning') to the contact for each completed booking, preserving service history. Booking details that don't fit a tag are written into the Mailchimp contact note field as structured text.

BookingKoala service categories (e.g., house cleaning, pet grooming, moving, landscaping) map directly to Mailchimp tags. Each service category a customer has booked receives its own tag on the contact record. Tags enable segment filtering by service type, support audience segmentation for targeted campaigns, and can trigger automations based on service interests.

Mailchimp has no native booking-date field, so we create a custom datetime merge field (e.g., BOOKING_DATE__c) on each Mailchimp contact and populate it with the first booking creation timestamp extracted from BookingKoala. This field supports date‑based segment filtering, recency analysis, and time‑since‑first‑booking automations such as welcome series or loyalty follow‑ups.

BookingKoala custom fields on customer records (e.g., 'preferred_provider', 'parking_instructions', 'access_code') require corresponding Mailchimp merge fields. We create each merge field in Mailchimp before migration and map values field-by-field. Text fields become text merge fields; date fields become date merge fields.

BookingKoala providers are staff or contractor records tied to scheduling and dispatch. Mailchimp has no staff or scheduling model. Provider data does not migrate. If provider information is relevant for customer-facing marketing (e.g., 'Your cleaner: Jane'), it can be stored as a custom merge field on the contact record after migration.

BookingKoala invoices and payment records have no Mailchimp equivalent. We do not migrate billing history, line items, or payment status. If invoice-related marketing is needed (e.g., 'Your invoice is ready'), Mailchimp campaigns can be built using exported invoice data as an external reference, but the records themselves stay out of Mailchimp.

BookingKoala tracks referral credits per customer (credits earned when a referred customer books). This is a numeric value with no Mailchimp equivalent, so we create a REFERRAL_CREDITS__c merge field and populate it with the current credit balance at migration time. Mailchimp automations cannot act on this field without a third-party integration.

BookingKoala maintains a dynamic abandoned-cart list — customers who began a booking but did not complete it. Mailchimp segments cannot import a static abandoned-cart list directly; the list must be rebuilt as a Mailchimp Segment using engagement and date filters. We export the abandoned-cart customer IDs so your Mailchimp admin can recreate the segment logic.