Migrate from Pipeliner CRM to Mailchimp

Tier verification and API access confirmation

We confirm the customer's Pipeliner plan tier during initial scoping. If the account is on Starter, we require a documented upgrade to Business tier before migration begins because Starter has no API access. We verify API connectivity by making a test call to the Pipeliner REST endpoint, confirm the required entities (Contacts, Accounts, Leads, Opportunities) are accessible, and document any fields that return null or permission-denied responses due to field-level access controls within Pipeliner.

Data audit and quality assessment

We extract a sample of 200-500 records from Pipeliner via API and profile data quality across email deliverability, duplicate rate, custom field completeness, and relationship integrity (Contacts without linked Accounts, Opportunities without linked Contacts or Accounts). We flag records with missing email addresses (which cannot migrate to Mailchimp), duplicate company names requiring normalisation, and custom fields with high null rates that may not warrant merge field creation in Mailchimp. This audit produces a data cleansing brief that the customer can action before migration to reduce record rejection in Mailchimp.

Merge field design and Opportunity strategy decision

We map every Pipeliner field destined for Mailchimp to a merge field, tag, or constant value. We present two Opportunity handling strategies: merge field strategy (Opportunity Stage, Value, Close Date, and Owner as named merge fields on the Subscriber) or tag strategy (stage as a tag, value as a single merge field). The customer chooses the strategy during this step. We create the merge fields in the Mailchimp audience via API before any subscriber import begins, ensuring the fields exist at the moment of first import.

Contact and Account migration

We run Account migration first because Contacts link to Accounts via the AccountId reference. Account Name, Industry, Website, and Phone migrate as merge fields on the Contact. We deduplicate by email during Contact import using Mailchimp's upsert behaviour, updating existing subscribers rather than creating duplicates when the email address already exists in the audience. Each Contact inherits its linked Account's merge field values during the same import pass using a lookup resolution step.

Lead and Opportunity enrichment

Pipeliner Leads migrate as Subscribers tagged as 'Lead' with the lead_status merge field and lead_source as a tag. After Contact and Lead migration completes, we run an Opportunity enrichment pass that adds Opportunity merge fields and tags to every Subscriber with a linked Opportunity. This is a post-import transformation step rather than a pre-import field mapping because Opportunity-to-Contact lookups require the Contact record to exist first.

Cutover, validation, and handoff

We freeze Pipeliner writes during cutover, run a final delta sync of any records modified during the migration window, and validate the Mailchimp audience against the source record count. We deliver a reconciliation report showing Contact count in equals Subscriber count in, Account count in equals company data entries in Mailchimp, and Opportunity field coverage percentage. We do not migrate Automatizer workflows, Quotes, Projects, Activities, or attachments; these are documented in the handoff checklist with recommended Mailchimp equivalents where applicable. We support a 72-hour post-cutover window for the customer to report import anomalies before closing the engagement.