After integrating Follow Up Boss with Mailchimp, there may be a discrepancy in the number of contacts synced and the number of contacts in Follow Up Boss. This can happen for a number of reasons.
Common Reasons Contacts Don't Sync
Contact doesn't have an email address
Contacts that do not have any email address won't be synced into Mailchimp. This means that total number of contacts in FUB is likely to be larger than the number of contacts in Mailchimp because some of the contacts in FUB may not have email addresses.
Email address is unsubscribed
When an email is unsubscribed, the email address listed on the lead profile will is displayed in orange and will show unsubscribed in an orange pill next to the email.
Email address is bounced
When an email bounces, the email address listed on the lead profile will is displayed in orange and will show bounced in an orange pill next to the email.
Email address is invalid
Mailchimp detects invalid email addresses and automatically will not sync these contacts.
It's been 30 minutes, why haven't my contacts synced?
When connecting Mailchimp, Follow Up Boss pushes the FUB contacts into Mailchimp. This initial sync can take a long time depending on how many contacts you have. As a rule of thumb, it takes about 1 hour to sync 5,000 contacts. If you don't see all your contacts in Mailchimp after it has been connected, please check again later.
The number of contacts in Mailchimp hasn't been updated
You can see the number of contacts per list in Mailchimp, although Mailchimp doesn't update this number right away, there may be a delay before it is updated.
The search feature in Mailchimp doesn't find newly added contacts
Similar to the number of contacts, the search option in Mailchimp doesn't update right away. It may take some time for the search to be updated after a contact has been synced to Mailchimp. For example, when you add a new contact in FUB, it is added to MailChimp in a few seconds however, the search feature in MailChimp may not find that contact if you try to search right away. You can use the Segment feature to quickly check if a contact is in Mailchimp, unlike Search, it's updated immediately.
Some merge fields were marked as required
We do not recommend modifying Merge Fields on the Mailchimp list that is synced with FUB because it may cause issues with the sync. In particular, if merge fields are marked "Required", any contacts that don't have a value for that field in FUB won't be synced into Mailchimp.
To fix this issue, uncheck all "Required" checkboxes (except Email Address which cannot be unchecked), then disconnect Mailchimp from FUB and re-connected it again. This will trigger full sync and add missing contacts
Some merge fields were deleted
If any merge fields are deleted on the Mailchimp list that is synced with FUB, the sync will break. Follow the steps below to resolve this issue.
- Disconnect Mailchimp from FUB (must be done first)
- Delete the Mailchimp list that was synced with FUB
- Create a new list in Mailchimp
- Reconnect Mailchimp in FUB using the new list
Custom stage not syncing to Mailchimp
When you add or edit custom stages while having Mailchimp integration enabled, custom stages are not added to MailChimp automatically. Contacts with custom stages appear with blank stage in MailChimp:
To prevent this problem, please add custom stages in Mailchimp after adding them in Follow Up Boss. Go to "List fields and merge tags menu":
Scroll down to "Stage Options", click on the plus icon and enter the new stage you added in Follow Up Boss:
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Save Changes" button. Once you do this, any new/updated contacts will be synced into Mailchimp with the custom stage.
Tags with special characters do not sync
Remove symbols from tags in Follow Up Boss. Known symbols that cause issues include: < > and [ ]. To resolve this, go to the Tags page in Follow Up Boss, search for the symbol, and edit the names of any tags that contain that symbol.
I was notified that my Mailchimp integration has become disconnected
These are the account errors that will cause the integration to be disabled and how to fix those errors: Mailchimp account closed or Mailchimp API key no longer valid. To resolve this, get a new valid API key from Mailchimp. You will add this to the Follow Up Boss integrations page. Mailchimp list is no longer valid To resolve this, navigate to the Follow Up Boss integration page and pick a valid list Mailchimp merge field limit of 30 fields reached. To resolve this, remove merge fields in Mailchimp or use a different list Merge field named {$field['name']} ({$field['tag']}) cannot be required. To resolve this, by un-selecting required for the merge field in Mailchimp