Migrate from ContactDB to Mailchimp

ContactDB contact records map directly to Mailchimp Audience Members. The required Email Address field maps to Mailchimp EMAIL. First Name, Last Name, phone, and title map to Mailchimp merge fields (FNAME, LNAME, PHONE, COMPANY, JOBTITLE). We flag records with missing or malformed email addresses during pre-import validation and set them aside for customer review before the audience is marked sendable.

ContactDB exposes company name, company size, industry, and SICCODE per contact. Mailchimp has no native Companies object, so we map these to contact-level merge fields: COMPANY (standard), and custom merge fields for industry and SICCODE that we create in the Mailchimp audience schema before import. Company size maps to a custom numeric or picklist field based on the customer's preferred segmentation format. Deduplication is based on email address; multiple contacts with the same email are flagged for the customer's review.

ContactDB segment categories (industry, profession, title, country, software usage) do not export as standalone tag objects but appear as labeled properties per contact record. We reconstruct these as Mailchimp tags with a prefix convention (e.g., IND_Manufacturing, TITLE_CFO, COUNTRY_US) so that the customer can immediately build Mailchimp segments filtering by these tag values post-migration. The customer confirms the tag naming convention during scoping.

Profession and title-based segment labels from ContactDB are mapped to Mailchimp tags using the prefix convention. These tags enable the customer to target buyer personas (e.g., VP of Marketing, IT Director) in Mailchimp campaigns without rebuilding the criteria from scratch. Tags are applied as array values during the CSV-to-Mailchimp upsert process.

Country-based segment membership from ContactDB maps to Mailchimp tags (COUNTRY_US, COUNTRY_UK, etc.) or, if the customer prefers preference-based grouping, to Mailchimp Groups with a Country group category. Group is preferable if the customer expects contacts to self-select country preferences in future Mailchimp signup forms; tag is preferable if the country data is a fixed attribute from the original list purchase.

ContactDB's software-usage segmentation criteria (B2B intent data about which tools a company uses) map to Mailchimp tags with a SFTW_ prefix. These tags allow the customer to run account-based email sequences targeting contacts at companies using complementary or competitive software. Mailchimp's tag-based filtering supports these intent-based segments in campaign targeting.

ContactDB's credit rating attribute is a ContactDB-specific firmographic field. We create a Mailchimp custom merge field (CREDIT_RTG as a text or picklist field) and populate it during import. If ContactDB exports credit rating as a numeric score, we store it as a numeric custom field for future segmentation based on company credit tier.

ContactDB's Data Integrity Guarantee does not prevent bounced emails from appearing in the export package, especially for contacts purchased at lower refresh-frequency tiers. We run a pre-import validation step that detects malformed email formats, missing @ symbols, and obviously invalid domains, and flag these records separately. We deliver the full list of invalid addresses as a Mailchimp-compatible suppression list (CSV of emails) that the customer imports into Mailchimp before the main audience import to prevent bounced sends that damage sender reputation.