Migrate from GoldMine to Mailchimp

GoldMine Contact records map to Mailchimp Contacts within a target Audience. We extract the primary contact fields (Name, Company, Title, Email, Phone, Address) from GoldMine's CONTACT1 table, parse the Name field into First Name and Last Name merge fields, and map the primary email address as the Mailchimp email_address field which serves as the unique identifier. Any GoldMine contact with no valid email address is flagged for the customer's admin to verify or exclude before import to avoid Mailchimp's hard bounce penalties.

GoldMine Company records are distinct from Contacts and can link to multiple Contacts. We map the Company Name, Industry, Website, and Phone to Mailchimp Merge Fields (COMPANY, INDUSTRY, WEBSITE, PHONE) that are added to the target Audience schema before import. On the Essentials and Standard tiers Mailchimp allows up to 40 merge fields per Audience; we configure these dynamically based on the GoldMine Company fields present. Company-CONTACT linkage is preserved as a GoldMine-Company tag on the Contact record in Mailchimp.

GoldMine Groups (marketing lists, segment labels, and tag-like labels) map directly to Mailchimp Tags. We extract every distinct Group name from GoldMine's GRPMEMB table and create a corresponding Tag in the destination Audience for each Contact-Group membership. Mailchimp Segments are built from tag combinations and merge field filters; we document the segment definitions the customer used in GoldMine as a written Mailchimp Segment recipe for the admin to implement post-import.

GoldMine stores custom fields in extended tables linked by RECID to the primary CONTACT1 record. These are not visible in the GoldMine UI and require SQL schema discovery. We enumerate all non-system columns across CONTACT1 and extended tables, classify each as text, numeric, date, or picklist, and map them to Mailchimp Merge Fields of the matching type (text, number, date, dropdown/radio). Mailchimp Standard and above allow 40 merge fields per Audience; Premium allows 200. We flag any overflow beyond the tier limit and advise the customer on Audience splitting or selective field migration.

GoldMine Company-level custom fields also live in extended tables. We enumerate these during the same discovery query, classify by data type, and add them as merge fields to the destination Audience alongside the standard Company fields. If the customer's GoldMine instance uses user-defined picklist values on Company custom fields, we create Mailchimp dropdown merge fields with the corresponding option values.

GoldMine User accounts are mapped to Mailchimp account users for audit and ownership purposes. We extract the GoldMine user roster (name, email, role) and cross-reference against the destination Mailchimp account's user list. If the destination Mailchimp account does not yet have all the GoldMine users provisioned, we flag the gap for the customer's admin to add them before migration so that imported contact ownership and audit trails map correctly.

GoldMine stores communication history (emails, calls, meetings, notes) as first-class History records tied to Contacts. Mailchimp has no native activity timeline for individual contacts outside of campaign sends. We extract GoldMine History records by contact, normalize the entry types (call, email, meeting, note), and write them as Contact Notes in Mailchimp with a prefix indicating the type and timestamp (e.g., '[Email 2023-04-12]'). The original MIME-encoded email content is stored as a plain-text note body. Customers with extensive GoldMine history should consider exporting the full history as a separate document reference rather than importing all entries as notes, which can bloat the Mailchimp contact record.

GoldMine appointments synced from Outlook or entered directly in GoldMine do not have a Mailchimp equivalent. Mailchimp does not store calendar events or meeting records. We flag this object as out-of-scope, extract the appointment data as a written inventory (subject, date, linked contact, attendee list) for the customer's admin, and recommend a separate calendar tool or a Mailchimp note on the contact record as the substitute for appointment context.