Migrate from Contact Beacon to Mailchimp

Beacon Contact records map to Mailchimp Members as the primary migration object. We map first_name, last_name, email, phone, and address fields to their Mailchimp equivalents. The email address serves as the dedupe key. Any Beacon Contact without a valid email address is excluded from the migration and logged separately; Mailchimp requires a valid email for Member creation. Custom fields on the Contact record map to Mailchimp Merge Fields (FNAME, LNAME, PHONE, ADDRESS are standard; any additional custom fields require pre-creation in Mailchimp before migration begins.

Beacon Donation records have no direct Mailchimp equivalent. We extract the most recent donation amount, donation date, and campaign name and write these as Mailchimp Merge Fields on the Member record. The Gift Aid boolean flag converts to a TEXT merge field (GA_YES/GA_NO or 1/0) since Mailchimp does not support boolean field types natively. Multiple donation history is consolidated to the latest record unless the customer specifies a multi-donation merge field approach during scoping. Historical donation amounts do not aggregate into Mailchimp reporting; they appear as static data on the contact record.

Beacon Campaigns map to Mailchimp Tags applied to Members rather than separate Audiences. Beacon's own integration guide recommends a single Mailchimp audience with tags to manage segment differences. We map each Beacon Campaign name to a corresponding Mailchimp Tag and apply it to every Member who has a donation linked to that Campaign. If the customer has fewer than three Beacon Campaigns and prefers audience separation, we can discuss audience creation per Campaign, but this conflicts with Beacon's own integration guidance for single-audience management.

Beacon Tags on Contacts map directly to Mailchimp Tags on Members. Tags are flat string labels and transfer without transformation. We flag any tags that were applied by inactive Beacon Workflows during migration scoping so the customer knows which tags may lose their automation context after migration.

Beacon Pipelines track donor journey stages (e.g. New Donor, Recurring, Major Donor, Lapsed). Mailchimp has no direct Pipeline equivalent. We map Pipeline stage names to Mailchimp Segments using static or dynamic segment rules based on Merge Field values. If the Pipeline stage was derived from a donation behavior (e.g. recurring vs one-time), we rebuild the segment logic using Mailchimp's Merge Field conditions. Conditional stage-routing rules from Beacon Pipelines cannot be preserved and must be manually reconfigured in Mailchimp Segments or Customer Journeys.

Beacon custom fields on Contacts (e.g. Preferred Contact Method, Volunteer Status, Charity Number) map to Mailchimp Merge Fields. We discover all active custom fields during scoping, map their data types to Mailchimp's supported Merge Field types (text, number, date, phone, address, birthday, dropdown), and pre-create any missing Merge Fields in the Mailchimp account before migration. Multi-select checkbox fields from Beacon cannot map to a native Mailchimp type and are flattened to comma-separated text or handled as Tags depending on the field semantics.

Beacon file attachments on Contact records (e.g. scanned Gift Aid declaration forms, event photos) have no Mailchimp equivalent. We download attachments during the Beacon export via individual API requests, package them as a file archive, and deliver the archive to the customer alongside the migration. The customer can attach these files manually to relevant Member records or store them in a separate document system.

Beacon user accounts map to Mailchimp Users with corresponding permission roles. We extract Beacon user names and emails and create or match them to Mailchimp user accounts. If a Beacon User is inactive or archived, we create the corresponding Mailchimp user as inactive. Beacon Users with CRM Owner permissions map to Mailchimp Admin roles where applicable.