Migrate from Ortto to Mailchimp

Ortto People records map directly to Mailchimp Contacts within an Audience. The email address serves as the dedupe key. Standard fields (first name, last name, phone, location) map to Mailchimp merge fields (FNAME, LNAME, PHONE, ADDRESS). Custom fields on People up to 100 migrate to Mailchimp merge fields; however, Mailchimp limits merge fields to 40 per Audience and does not support all Ortto field types (aggregate fields, formula fields, and custom field types without a direct Mailchimp equivalent are flagged for manual conversion or stored as a text field). We scan field types during discovery and flag unsupported types before migration begins.

Ortto's Account (Organization) object has no direct Mailchimp equivalent. We handle this by creating a company-name merge field (COMPANY or a custom COMPANY field) on the Mailchimp Audience and tagging each contact with the account name prefixed by org:. If the customer has multi-level account hierarchies (parent-subsidiary relationships), we flatten them into a single company tag. This is a known data loss area; the relationship between multiple contacts at the same company cannot be preserved natively in Mailchimp. During scoping we confirm whether the Account hierarchy is business-critical or used only for reporting, and we recommend a rebuild strategy in Mailchimp's tagging taxonomy if needed.

Ortto Audiences map to Mailchimp Audiences. We create each destination Audience before importing contacts and preserve the original audience membership by tagging each contact with the source audience name. Dynamic audiences in Ortto (which use filter conditions on activities and fields) cannot be recreated as dynamic segments in Mailchimp without third-party tools; we document the filter conditions and recommend either a static segment rebuild using Mailchimp's segment builder or a third-party segmentation tool like Mailchimp's built-in segments combined with tags.

Ortto Tags migrate directly to Mailchimp Tags, preserving the tag taxonomy. Tags are a first-class object in Ortto's API and map cleanly to Mailchimp's tagging model. We export the full tag list during discovery, deduplicate if needed, and recreate the taxonomy in the destination Audience. Note that Mailchimp tags are per-Audience, not account-wide; if the customer uses cross-audience tagging in Ortto, we replicate this by applying the same tags to contacts in each relevant Mailchimp Audience.

Ortto's Activity API captures behavioral events (form submissions, page views, custom events, email opens, clicks) as first-class records per person. Mailchimp does not have a custom activity object; it tracks opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces at the campaign level only. We preserve the most recent activity date for each contact in a custom merge field (LAST_ACTIVITY_DATE) and store notable event counts (total opens, total clicks) as custom fields. Full activity feed history cannot be represented in Mailchimp natively; we flag this as a scope limitation and recommend a separate analytics tool (Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or a data warehouse) if behavioral history is required post-migration.

Ortto campaigns (email, SMS, push) can be exported individually or in bulk as CSV. We export campaign metadata (name, subject line, send date, audience assignment, status) and recreate the campaign structure in Mailchimp. Campaign content (templates, body copy, images) requires a separate export of HTML and assets; we deliver the content as a structured export package and document the content mapping so your team can reassemble campaigns in Mailchimp's template builder. Scheduled or recurring campaigns in Ortto are flagged as one-time or new-recurring in Mailchimp since Mailchimp's automation triggers differ from Ortto's journey-based scheduling.

Up to 100 custom fields per Person record migrate to Mailchimp merge fields. Ortto field types map to Mailchimp field types as follows: text to text, number to number, date to date, single-select to radio, multi-select to checkbox. Ortto aggregate fields (not supported in Ortto's API) and formula fields are flagged during discovery; we export their values as text merge fields but note that they will not recalculate in Mailchimp. Fields exceeding Mailchimp's 40-merge-field-per-Audience limit require a second Audience or a tag-based workaround, which we document during scoping.

Ortto's custom user roles (Business tier and above) map to Mailchimp's permission model. Mailchimp uses a simpler role structure: Admin, Manager, Author, Viewer. We export the role assignments from Ortto and map them to the closest Mailchimp role. Permissions not represented in Mailchimp (such as granular CDP access controls) are documented in the handoff report so the customer's admin can communicate access boundaries during the transition.