Migrate from Sensei Cloud to Mailchimp

HIPAA PHI risk requires BAA and data minimization before Mailchimp import

Migrating dental patient contact information into Mailchimp introduces HIPAA compliance obligations because patient names, phone numbers, insurance IDs, and treatment metadata constitute Protected Health Information. We require a signed Business Associate Agreement before extraction begins. We apply data minimization — only contact fields and appointment metadata migrate; clinical notes, imaging references, and treatment plans do not. Practices must decide whether to include insurance group numbers and plan types before migration, as those fields may constitute PHI depending on your legal interpretation. This decision point adds a scoping step to the migration plan but is non-negotiable under HIPAA risk management principles.

Significant portion of patient records may lack email addresses

Mailchimp contacts are keyed by email address — there is no bulk-import workaround for patients without one. Dental practice management systems routinely have email addresses for 40–70% of active patients; the remainder have phone numbers but no documented email. We surface the count of email-missing records during the data assessment phase so your team can decide whether to run a pre-migration outreach campaign to collect addresses. Records without email are excluded from the Mailchimp import and reported as a separate non-migrated export. This is a pre-migration action item, not a migration-day surprise — we identify it before the project begins.

Mailchimp's 40-merge-field cap constrains custom field scope

Mailchimp caps merge fields at 40 per audience, and field types are limited to text, number, date, phone, address, and website. Sensei Cloud custom fields on patient records — if your practice uses more than 40 total — cannot all migrate simultaneously. We audit custom field count during discovery and apply a prioritization rubric: contact fields and appointment metadata migrate first; insurance metadata and referral fields follow; archival or rarely-used custom fields are deferred or exported as a reference CSV rather than imported into Mailchimp. This cap is a hard Mailchimp platform constraint, not a FlitStack limitation, and we surface it during scoping so there are no surprises at import time.

Clinical data loss is structural — not a mapping problem

The gap between Sensei Cloud and Mailchimp is categorical, not technical. Treatment plans, clinical notes, imaging references, insurance claim histories, and procedure codes have no Mailchimp equivalent by design — Mailchimp is an email marketing platform, not a clinical record. No migration tool, FlitStack included, can place treatment history inside Mailchimp's contact record without violating the platform's schema. We document the full scope of non-migratable data before migration begins and provide a reference export of treatment codes and plan summaries as a standalone file. Clinical staff continue referencing Sensei Cloud for treatment history. This is a scoping decision, not a failure of the migration process.

Recall logic requires rebuild in Mailchimp, not migration

Sensei Cloud's recall system — which tracks when patients are due for their next cleaning, checkup, or procedure based on provider-set intervals — has no direct Mailchimp equivalent. The recall interval, calculated due date, and recall status all migrate as custom fields on the contact record, but the automation logic that triggers a recall reminder email must be rebuilt in Mailchimp's automation builder. We deliver a rebuild reference document that maps each Sensei Cloud recall rule to a corresponding Mailchimp automation trigger, including the date-comparison logic and tag-application steps. Your Mailchimp admin (or our team) rebuilds the automation using the migrated data as the trigger source.