Our migration service makes it easy to move to ActiveCampaign from your old email marketing or marketing automation provider.
You never need to worry about losing contacts or automations. When you switch to ActiveCampaign, we help you get up and running fast. We will import your lists, contacts, custom fields, tags and we will recreate opt-in forms, landing pages, automation workflows, and email templates.
This article will show you how to migrate contacts from MailChimp into ActiveCampaign.
Please note that we've also created a self-paced guide to help you migrate from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign that covers:
- Exporting your contacts
- Importing your contacts and custom fields
- An ActiveCampaign platform overview
- More resources to get you up and running quickly
Log into your MailChimp account
Once you have logged into your MailChimp account, click "Lists" located at the top of your page.
Export a list or a segment
If you have several lists in MailChimp that you want to export, you will have to follow these steps for each one of them.
MailChimp gives you the option to export contacts grouped as "Lists" or "Segments." Usually, we would advise you to import lists first, and then you can use segments to export additional information.
To export a list:
- From the List page, click the name of the list you wish to export.
- Click “Export list."
- Click “Export as CSV.”
To export lists from the overall lists page:
- From the Lists page, click the list you wish to export.
- Click the dropdown menu next to "Stats" and choose the "Exports" option.
- On the next page, you should see your lists with either a green checkmark or a yellow clock icon. A green checkmark means that your file is ready to export. If it still shows a yellow clock icon, this means that MailChimp is still working to make your file available for export.
- If you see the green checkmark, click "Export as CSV."
To export a segment:
- From the Lists page, click the name of the list you wish to export.
- Click "View Saved Segments" and click the segment you wish to export.
- Click "Export segment."
- Click "Export as CSV."
Click here for more information on exporting lists and segments from MailChimp.
Migrate general information and tags
Once you have downloaded the CSV file from MailChimp, you will need to import the file into your ActiveCampaign account. We will guide you through a process in which you map the columns from your file with the fields you have in ActiveCampaign.
If the fields do not yet exist in your ActiveCampaign account, you can create them from the Import contacts page. To do so, click "Add New Field" from the "Map into field" dropdown and create the desired custom field.
If you need to import your MailChimp groups, you would have to do that separately from your general data migration.
To import Groups from MailChimp into ActiveCampaign:
- Log into your MailChimp account
- Go to > Lists > Manage Contacts > Groups > View subscribers > Export segment.
- Once you have that, import those contacts into your ActiveCampaign account, select a tag for those contacts, mark the option "Update existing contacts" and complete the import. This setting will add additional information onto the contacts you imported previously.
Click here for more information on exporting groups from MailChimp.
Create segments in ActiveCampaign
If you had created segments in your MailChimp account, you will need to recreate them in ActiveCampaign.
To get started:
- Check the segment configurations in your MailChimp account. To do so, navigate to the Lists page > click the down caret for the list > Select "Manage Contacts" > Click "Segments." Here you can view all saved segments. Click here to read how to view and edit saved segments in MailChimp.
- Once you know what conditions to use to create your segments, you can create your segments in ActiveCampaign. Click here to learn how to create a segment in ActveCampaign.
Note that we only work with "flexible" (dynamic) segments. This means that as contacts match the conditions you have set in your segment, they will automatically become part of that segment. If you are looking for a similar function as the "static segments" by MailChimp, we recommend tagging your contacts and then creating a segment based on that tag. By adding a tag to your contacts, you are assigning them a piece of “static” information. Then, only contacts who have that tag would be added to your segment.