Migrate from Lexis Affinity to Mailchimp

Lexis Affinity contact records map 1:1 to Mailchimp audience members via email address as the unique key. First name, last name, email, phone, and address fields map to Mailchimp's standard FNAME, LNAME, EMAIL, PHONE, and ADDRESS merge fields. Duplicate email addresses are flagged before import to prevent overwrites.

Lexis Affinity's Company entity does not have a direct Mailchimp equivalent. The primary company name associated with each contact extracts as a string into the COMPANY merge field on the member record. Multiple company affiliations per contact collapse to the primary company only.

Every Lexis Affinity custom field on a contact becomes a Mailchimp custom merge field. Merge field names must be uppercase, 10 characters or fewer, and contain only letters, numbers, and underscores per Mailchimp naming rules. Text fields migrate directly; date fields convert to YYYY-MM-DD string format.

Lexis Affinity contact tags (e.g., practice area labels, referral source flags) migrate as Mailchimp tags on each member. Tags enable segmentation in Mailchimp without requiring custom merge fields. Tag names are preserved exactly as they appear in Lexis Affinity. These tags can be used to trigger automated campaigns and to filter audience segments for targeted messaging.

Matter names linked to contacts in Lexis Affinity do not have a native Mailchimp equivalent. We surface matter names as tags (Matter_XXX) for reference segmentation, but the full matter record and its billing, documents, and tasks remain in Lexis Affinity and do not migrate.

Lexis Affinity's original contact creation timestamp migrates as a custom merge field (ORIGINAL_CREATEDATE) since Mailchimp's built-in member-since date reflects the import date, not the source system date. This preserves reporting continuity for time-based segmentation. The ORIGINAL_CREATEDATE field can be used in Mailchimp reports to analyze subscriber acquisition trends over time.

Lexis Affinity active contacts map to Mailchimp 'subscribed' status. Contacts flagged as inactive, bounced, or unsubscribed in Lexis Affinity map to the corresponding Mailchimp suppression states. This requires a pre-import status audit to avoid importing cleaned or do-not-contact records and ensures compliance with email marketing regulations.

Phone numbers migrate to Mailchimp's PHONE merge field. Mobile and direct phone numbers from Lexis Affinity merge into a single PHONE field — the primary phone number per contact is used when both exist. International phone format standardization is applied during import.

Lexis Affinity postal address components (street, city, state/province, postal code, country) map to Mailchimp's structured ADDRESS merge field. This enables Mailchimp's built-in address formatting and geo-segmentation features without custom field work and supports location-based campaign targeting such as distance-based automations.

Lexis Affinity trust account balances, billing history, and invoice records have no Mailchimp equivalent and do not migrate. These stay in Lexis Affinity for practice management. Only contact-level data moves. These financial records remain accessible in Lexis Affinity for billing and compliance purposes.

Documents attached to Lexis Affinity contact or matter records do not migrate. Mailchimp supports file attachments in campaigns but does not store document libraries per contact. Client documents stay in Lexis Affinity or your document management system and can be linked in campaigns via URLs if needed.

Lexis Affinity workflow automations, conflict checks, and matter-triggered actions are practice management logic with no Mailchimp equivalent. These must be rebuilt as Mailchimp customer journeys after migration. We export workflow definitions as a reference document for your team to aid in the rebuild process.