Migrate from Synergy Matters to Mailchimp

Synergy Matters Clients (law firm matters/clients) map to Mailchimp Audiences. Each Audience in Mailchimp is a flat contact list. If Synergy Matters has multiple client databases or practice-area groupings, those can become separate Mailchimp Audiences or be consolidated into one with tag-scoped segmentation.

Synergy Matters Contacts (individuals associated with a Client) map directly to Mailchimp Contacts (Members). The primary email address is the required identifier. Contacts without email addresses are excluded — FlitStack surfaces these as a skipped-contacts report for manual review. Additional fields such as phone, company, and address are transferred as merge fields where present.

Email address is the required field for Mailchimp contact creation. Synergy Matters contact email maps directly to Mailchimp EMAIL field. Invalid email formats are flagged before migration; hard bounces from the source list are excluded. Validation includes syntax checks, MX record verification, and removal of known hard-bounce addresses. FlitStack records any rejected email in an error log for correction and resubmission, keeping the Mailchimp list clean and protecting sender reputation.

First name and last name from Synergy Matters map to Mailchimp FNAME and LNAME merge fields. These are standard Mailchimp default fields. Blank names are preserved as empty strings; no defaulting or nickname extraction is applied. If a contact has one name field in Synergy Matters, that name populates FNAME and LNAME remains blank. FlitStack does not split names; any splitting must be done manually or via a cleanup script.

Mailchimp does not include a PHONE field by default — it must be added as a PHONE-type merge field before migration. FlitStack creates the PHONE merge field on the target Audience and maps Synergy Matters phone numbers into it. Mobile and office numbers are not differentiated in Synergy Matters; both map to the same field.

Mailchimp does not have a native COMPANY field. If law firm contacts have a company affiliation (e.g., in-house counsel contacts), FlitStack creates a TEXT-type COMPANY merge field and maps the source company name. For individual clients without a company, the field remains blank.

Synergy Matters address fields (street, city, state, postal_code, country) map to the Mailchimp ADDRESS merge field type, which stores addr1, addr2, city, state, zip, and country as structured sub-fields. Partial addresses are preserved as sub-field values where available; blank sub-fields are left empty.

Synergy Matters matter status values (Active, Pending, Closed, On-Hold) are translated into Mailchimp Tags. Each contact is tagged with the status of their associated matter at migration time. Mailchimp tags are not mutually exclusive — a contact can hold multiple tags. Status tags are applied post-contact-creation via the tag-add endpoint.

Synergy Matters practice-area custom fields (Family Law, Corporate, Litigation, Real Estate, etc.) map to Mailchimp Tags. Contacts associated with a Client inherit the practice-area tag of that Client. If a Client spans multiple practice areas, FlitStack applies all applicable tags.

Synergy Matters documents and attachments have no Mailchimp equivalent. Mailchimp does not store documents — only campaign-level attachments (hosted externally). Documents remain in Synergy Matters; FlitStack does not migrate them. If a document link needs to appear in a Mailchimp campaign, the document must be hosted externally and linked by URL.

Matters, time entries, and disbursement records are legal-billing constructs with no Mailchimp equivalent. Mailchimp has no data model for billing status, hours logged, or financial records. These records remain in Synergy Matters and are not migrated. If billing status needs to drive email segmentation, it can be surfaced as a custom merge field or tag using client-level status fields.

Synergy Matters workflows (if any exist in the client's configuration) do not migrate to Mailchimp automations. Mailchimp automations must be rebuilt in the Mailchimp Automation builder using migrated contact data and merge fields as triggers. FlitStack provides a workflow-export summary to assist the rebuild.