Getting Started

3 minute read

Using Mailchimp in your Salesforce

Once our application has been installed, connected, and set up, you will be able to see Mailchimp in Salesforce. We have a dedicated application and components that appear on your Salesforce contact and lead pages. To learn more, please check out the interactive demo below.

Next Steps

Below are the articles that we recommend reading and the best next steps.

FAQs

📋 Summary of the Problem

You've enabled email activity tracking in Mailchimp for Salesforce, but the initial sync is taking much longer than expected. The sync progress may appear stuck at a certain percentage, or you're not seeing email activity data populate in your reports right away. You're wondering if something is wrong or if this is normal behavior.

💡 The Solution

The long initial sync time is completely normal and expected. Here's what you need to know:

Email Activity Tracking is Not Enabled by Default

Mailchimp for Salesforce does not automatically store email activity data (opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces) in Salesforce. This is an optional feature that you enable through the Mailchimp Settings. When disabled, you can still view live email activity through Lightning Components, but the data isn't stored for reporting purposes.

Why the Initial Sync Takes Time

When you first enable email activity tracking, the system needs to import historical data for all your campaigns. This process takes significantly longer than regular syncs because:

The system processes all historical email activity within your configured retention period (for example, the last 90 days). Each email activity record (opens, clicks, unsubscribes) uses approximately 2KB of Salesforce storage. The sync runs in batches to avoid Salesforce governor limits, processing campaigns and activity types separately. If you have multiple campaigns with thousands of interactions, this can result in dozens of batch jobs running sequentially.

During this initial import, you may see the progress indicator pause at certain percentages. This is normal. The batch jobs are working through your data systematically, creating email activity records as they go.

Subsequent Syncs are Much Faster

After the initial import completes, future syncs only process new or changed activity data since the last sync. This incremental approach is much faster and typically completes within minutes rather than hours.

What You Can Expect

The sync will complete successfully, but depending on your data volume, the initial import may take several hours or even run overnight. You can verify the sync is working by checking that new Mailchimp Email Activity records are being created in Salesforce, even while the overall progress shows an incomplete percentage. If you're concerned the sync has stopped, contact support, and we can check the batch job status in your org.

🔗 Related Articles

📋 Summary of the Problem

When managing data between Salesforce and Mailchimp, understanding update frequency is critical for campaign timing, data accuracy, and automation planning. Users often have questions about how quickly changes in one system appear in the other, and what options exist for real-time versus batch synchronization.

💡 The Solution

Data update frequency depends on the direction of data flow and which features you're using. Here's how our integration handles updates:

Salesforce to Mailchimp:

• Field Mappings (Trigger-Based, Near Real-Time): When you create or edit a Contact or Lead in Salesforce, triggers automatically fire to send the mapped field data to Mailchimp. This provides near real-time updates, subject to Salesforce processing and API call limits. Users must have the appropriate Mailchimp for Salesforce permission set assigned for triggers to fire on their edits.

• Data Wizard (Scheduled Batch Updates): Runs scheduled bulk updates from Salesforce to Mailchimp, typically every hour. This timing is approximate, not guaranteed. Large data sets or Salesforce queue backlogs can delay execution. The Data Wizard is ideal for bulk synchronization and initial data loads.

• Invocable Actions (Real-Time via Automation): Provides real-time updates when you build automation in Salesforce Flows, Process Builder, or Apex triggers. These actions execute immediately when your automation calls them, allowing precise control over when and how updates are sent to Mailchimp.

Mailchimp to Salesforce:

• Primary Sync (Approximate Hourly): The primary sync attempts to run approximately every hour, pulling data from Mailchimp into Salesforce. This includes subscriber status, membership changes, tags, groups, and campaign activity. However, the timing is not guaranteed to be exactly one hour. Large audiences, Salesforce API limits, or queue saturation can extend the effective frequency.

• Lightning Components (Synced Data Display): Our Lightning components display the most recently synced Mailchimp data that's stored in Salesforce. They do not call Mailchimp APIs directly at view time. Data freshness depends on when the last successful Primary Sync completed. You can manually refresh specific records using the refresh button on the component.

Do you use webhooks?

Real-time updates from Mailchimp to Salesforce typically rely on webhooks. However, webhooks require additional customer configuration and can create security concerns and support complications. To keep the integration straightforward and secure, we use scheduled batch syncs instead of webhooks.

🔗 Related Articles

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Getting Started

In this article

Using Mailchimp in your Salesforce

Next Steps

FAQs

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Legal

Product

Resources

Getting Started

In this article

Using Mailchimp in your Salesforce

Next Steps

FAQs

Why does the initial email activity sync take a long time?

How do I add members to an audience

How can I reduce my costs?

Do you support professional edition?

How frequently is my data updated?

Do you have access to our data?

Do you offer product demos?

What versions of Salesforce do you support?

Partners

Legal

Product

Resources