Understanding Field Mappings and Custom Email Fields in Salesforce to Mailchimp Integration
When setting up field mappings between Salesforce and Mailchimp, it’s important to understand how email fields are handled, particularly during a retrospective sync. The current integration design is built around the standard email field as the primary identifier for audience members in Mailchimp. This means that if you:
- Have added the custom email address to Mailchimp (creating a Mailchimp member).
- Set up field mappings (Salesforce to Mailchimp) so that the custom email address is mapped to the Mailchimp email field.
- Ran a retrospective sync.
In this case Mailchimp will create a new audience member using the standard email field instead of updating the existing member with the custom email field.
This behavior can lead to unexpected outcomes, such as duplicate members in your Mailchimp audience. The retrospective sync relies on the standard email field for consistency and compatibility with Mailchimp’s core functionality, which does not currently support using custom email fields as a key identifier.
To minimize issues, it’s recommended to ensure the standard email field in Salesforce aligns with the primary email field in Mailchimp. Avoid relying on custom email fields for key mappings unless you’re confident that the standard email field is consistently maintained across both systems.
We recognize that this limitation may cause confusion, and we are actively working to improve our messaging to clarify this behavior. Additionally, a feature request has been submitted to explore the possibility of supporting custom email fields in field mappings during retrospective syncs. Until such a feature is implemented, maintaining alignment with the standard email field will help avoid potential discrepancies or duplicate members.
