Troubleshooting: MailChimp integration – Timely

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MailChimp is a tool that helps you design email newsletters, share them on your social networks and track your results. For more information, see our help guide Introduction: MailChimp integration. This will allow you to automatically sync all of your customers (that have consented to receive email marketing) to your MailChimp account. In this guide, you will learn how to troubleshoot potential errors with the MailChimp integration.

Error: my customers are not syncing to MailChimp

If you have connected MailChimp and Timely, you will be able to send customer data manually to MailChimp. It is common for there to be a difference between the number of customers you have in Timely and the number of subscribers you have in MailChimp. Some common explanations for customers not being synced are:

There is no email address in the customer's record.
The customer has already unsubscribed from the list in MailChimp.
More than one customer in Timely shares an email address (an email address will only be used once).
A customer that uses that email address has been deleted in Timely.
The customer record is merged.
The email address of the merged (secondary) customer will be unsubscribed in MailChimp.
If both merged customers share the same email address, the they are both unsubscribed.
The checkbox to opt them into email marketing (via MailChimp) has been unchecked.

Troubleshooting suggestion 1: Refresh customers

This will refresh all synced customers and send any updates to MailChimp:

1 Head to setup from the main menu in your Timely account dashboard, and click on integrations (formerly add-ons) > email marketing.

2 Click save and then the refresh customers button.

Troubleshooting suggestion 2: Disconnect and reconnect

If you're still not having any luck, you can remove the integration and then set this up again from scratch:

1 Head to setup from the main menu in your Timely account dashboard, and click on integrations (formerly add-ons) > configure MailChimp.

2 Toggle the slider to OFF. You can then start the process of setting up MailChimp again!

Troubleshooting suggestion 3: Disable required fields on MailChimp

Sometimes customer fields on MailChimp (such as names, date of birth, etc) are inadvertently set to required. If any of these values are missing for a customer then the customer will not be synced over to MailChimp. To troubleshoot this:

1 Log into your MailChimp account, and click lists from the main menu.

2 Open the list that you use to sync customers to, and click on settings > and choose list fields and merge tags from the options.

3 We recommend that you uncheck the required checkbox for all fields, except for the email address and first name.

4 When you are ready, click save to apply your changes.

Troubleshooting suggestion 4: Check how many list fields you have

MailChimp has a limit of 30 fields of subscriber information, for each List. Timely uses 17 of these fields to sync customer details, such as contact details, birthdays and recent booking history to MailChimp.

If you are using the same list to collect email signups from your website - or have a number of custom fields in place already - then you may reach the 30 field limit, preventing your customers from being synced to MailChimp.

We recommend creating a separate list for customers added via Timely, to make sure those customers are synced correctly. MailChimp have a guide that covers how to manage your list and signup form fields: Manage List and Signup Form Fields.

Issue: my customers are being unsubscribed

Sometimes, customers will be unsubscribed from MailChimp via the Timely connection. When this happens, the customer will show up as being unsubscribed by admin. The most common cause of this is when a customer leaves the box to opt-in to your MailChimp list unchecked, during the online booking process. For privacy reasons, customers will be required to give their consent to email marketing, whenever they book online.

There can also be other explanations for this happening. If you are seeing this happen in your MailChimp account frequently, without explanation, please reach out to our friendly support team so we can take a closer look!