Migrate from Criminal Case Management to Mailchimp

Criminal case management contacts migrate as Mailchimp contacts in the target audience. The email address becomes the Mailchimp subscriber ID — contacts without email are flagged for manual review before import to avoid bouncing the audience. We also store the source contact ID in a custom field for traceability and to support future delta synchronizations.

First name and last name map to Mailchimp's built-in FNAME and LNAME merge fields. If the source stores them in a single field, we split on the first space and populate both merge fields for proper Mailchimp personalization. This ensures that email campaigns can address recipients by their correct first name and last name, improving engagement rates.

Email address migrates as the Mailchimp subscriber key. We validate format and check against the Mailchimp audience's suppression list before inserting — contacts already unsubscribed are re-imported with their original status preserved. Any formatting issues such as extra spaces or uppercase characters are normalized to ensure consistent matching across the platform.

Phone numbers migrate to Mailchimp's PHONE merge field. E.164 formatting is applied during transformation so SMS-capable audiences in Mailchimp can use the number for texting campaigns. If a phone number lacks a country code, we prepend the default based on the contact's address field to ensure validity in international SMS sends.

Street, city, state, zip, and country map to Mailchimp's ADDRESS field group. This enables geographic segmentation in Mailchimp and ensures physical mailing address compliance for direct mail integrations. We also validate the address format and split components to match Mailchimp's required field structure, reducing errors during segmentation and campaigns.

Case management custom fields on Contact (e.g., practice area, bar number, referral source) create Mailchimp merge fields in the target audience. We generate the merge field definitions via Mailchimp API before the import batch runs and apply the appropriate field type per source data.

Contact-to-matter associations with roles (e.g., 'Plaintiff', 'Defendant', 'Witness', 'Attorney of Record') become Mailchimp tags. Each unique role value generates a tag — contacts with multiple roles receive multiple tags for segmentation by case involvement type. Tags are normalized to lowercase and trimmed of extra spaces to maintain consistency across the Mailchimp audience and simplify segmentation queries.

Attorney assignments per contact become Mailchimp tags named after the attorney (e.g., 'Attorney: Jane Doe'). This allows the firm to segment the audience by responsible attorney for internal routing or targeted firm updates. If an attorney is associated with multiple contacts, each contact receives the corresponding tag, enabling bulk email actions grouped by attorney.

Contact status in case management maps to a combination of Mailchimp subscriber status and a tag. Active contacts import as 'subscribed', inactive contacts as 'subscribed' with a status tag, and closed matters as 'subscribed' with a 'Closed Matter' tag for re-engagement campaigns.

Original contact create date from case management is preserved as a custom merge field (JOIN_DATE__c) in Mailchimp. This maintains reporting continuity — the firm can filter reports by when the contact was originally entered in the legal system. The date also supports automated re‑engagement campaigns based on client tenure, such as anniversary or yearly check‑in emails.

Matter names, case numbers, and court dates have no native Mailchimp equivalent — these legal identifiers cannot map to contact fields in an email marketing platform. We export them as a separate CSV in the migration report for reference or manual note-taking in Mailchimp.

Documents, evidence files, and court filings attached to contacts or matters do not migrate to Mailchimp. File attachments are downloaded from the source API and re-uploaded to Mailchimp's file manager if the firm wants them accessible from the Mailchimp interface, but without matter linkage.