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How to switch your Mailchimp classic automations to Kit Visual Automations
How to switch your Mailchimp classic automations to Kit Visual Automations

Map your Mailchimp classic automation triggers, emails, and post-send actions to a new Kit Visual Automation.

Updated over a week ago

Recreate your Mailchimp classic automations in Kit

If you’ve got Mailchimp classic automations that you’re bringing over to Kit, you’ll recreate them by creating “Visual Automations” on our platform. And this guide will walk you through the process!

Before we get started, we recommend reading our guides to Visual Automations, and creating your first Visual Automation in Kit, if you’re new to Visual Automations. Once you’re ready, let’s get into the framework for recreating your Mailchimp classic automation’s:

  • First trigger

  • Emails

  • Post-send actions

And keep reading until the end, where we do a full demo of how to recreate a simple Mailchimp classic automation as a Kit Visual Automation.

NOTE: Did you use Mailchimp customer journeys instead of classic automations? Then check out our separate guide to switching your Mailchimp customer journeys to Kit Visual Automations.

Recreating the trigger

Launch Mailchimp in one browser tab, and open the classic automation you want to recreate in Kit. Keep this browser tab open for convenient reference.

Next, open Kit in a separate browser tab and click Visual Automations under the Automate tab of the top navigation. Click the + New automation button, followed by Start from scratch to create a blank new Visual Automation.

Go back to your Mailchimp classic automation and check out the trigger of its first email. We’ll map this trigger as the entry point of your Kit Visual Automation.

At the moment, we offer equivalent Visual Automation entry points for these Mailchimp classic automation triggers:

For this first trigger of a Mailchimp classic automation…

Replace it with this Kit Visual Automation entry point

Signup

Joins a Form

Added tag

Is added to a Tag

Joins group

Is added to a Tag (where you’ve created a Tag for such an audience group)

Changes in a subscriber’s audience field

Purchase any product / Purchase specific product / Purchase product from category

Purchase

For example, if your Mailchimp classic automation starts with a subscriber signing up to your audience via a certain form, then select “Joins a form” as the entry point of your Kit Visual Automation.

As for other Mailchimp classic automation triggers, you may be able to recreate them via workarounds such as:

Mailchimp classic automation trigger

How to recreate this entry point in your Kit Visual Automation

Sent campaign

Set up a separate Visual Automation to tag subscribers who are sent an email Sequence with a certain Tag.

After that, set that Tag as the entry point of your current Visual Automation using the “Is added to a tag” option

Clicked campaign / Specific link in campaign clicked

Set up a Link Trigger where subscribers who click a certain link in your email will be tagged with a certain Tag.

After that, set that Tag as the entry point of your Visual Automation using the “Is added to a tag” option

Recreating your automated emails

With your Kit Visual Automation's entry point set up, you’ll recreate your Mailchimp's classic automation's emails (and their respective settings) next.

Here’s a broad overview of how to do so in Kit:

Component of Mailchimp classic automation

What to do in Kit

Create emails in your classic automation

Create a Sequence containing the emails that are to be sent in progression, and add this Sequence to your Visual Automation

Set the triggers for the second and subsequent emails in your classic automation

Adjust your Sequence emails’ send days (via the overall Sequence Schedule and “Send this email” setting of individual Sequence emails)

Set a schedule for each email in your classic automation

Adjust your Sequence emails’ send days (via the overall Sequence schedule and “Send this email” setting of individual Sequence emails)

Filter emails in your classic automation by segment or tag

Add a Condition to your Visual Automation to send an email Sequence to only subscribers who meet certain criteria, OR (if you want to set filters for individual Sequence emails) add filters to individual Sequence emails to exclude certain subscribers from receiving them

For example, if subscribers in your Mailchimp classic automation will receive a welcome email upon signup, then create:

  • A Kit Visual Automation with your email Form as the entry point, and

  • A Kit Sequence containing your welcome email.

After that, add the Sequence as the next step in the Kit Visual Automation following the entry point.

For more info on recreating Mailchimp email campaigns as Kit Sequences, visit our main guide to this subject. We’ll also demo how to recreate a simple Mailchimp classic automation below, so keep reading!

Recreating your automated post-send actions

There is an option for adding a post-send action after each email in your Mailchimp classic automation. If you've set up these actions, recreate them as steps in your Kit Visual Automation.

You can map the following Mailchimp classic automation post-send actions to your Kit Visual Automation in these ways:

Mailchimp classic automation post-send action

Kit Visual Automation step

Add tag / Add to group

Action > Add or remove Tag

Remove tag / Remove from group

Action > Add or remove Tag

Update merge field

Action > Set custom field

Archive / Unsubscribe

Action > Unsubscribe

For example, your Mailchimp classic automation may contain an email with a post-send action that adds subscribers to a “Newsletter” tag.

So, in your Kit Visual Automation, you’ll have a step that adds subscribers to an email Sequence. And after that step, you’ll create a new step to add subscribers to a “Newsletter” Tag.

Once you’re done recreating your Mailchimp classic automation as a Kit Visual Automation, toggle the Active switch at the top right to activate your Visual Automation.

Recreation demo

Knowing how Mailchimp classic automation triggers, emails, and post-send actions map to our Kit Visual Automation entry points, email Sequences, and steps can be rather abstract, so we’ll demo how to recreate a simple Mailchimp classic automation that has this flow:

  1. A contact joins your audience by signing up through an email form

  2. If the contact doesn’t have the “Customer” tag, then send the contact a product pitch email with the trigger of “Immediately after subscribed contacts join your audience”

  3. Contact receives a follow-up email with the trigger of “1 day after subscribers are sent previous email”

  4. Contact is tagged with “Pitched”

  5. Contact exits the classic automation

1. A contact signs up through your email form

In a blank new Kit Visual Automation, select “Joins a form” and select the name of the Form that will kick-start the Visual Automation.

2. If the contact doesn’t have the “Customer” tag, then immediately send the contact a product pitch email

For this step, add a Condition that checks whether the contact has been tagged with “Customer” first.

Then, for contacts who have not been tagged with “Customer,” create a new action under the “No” branch to add these contacts to a new product pitch email Sequence.

(You can create the new Sequence from the Visual Automations builder directly, or by accessing the Sequence editor via the Send tab > Sequences in the top navigation.)

The first email in your product pitch Sequence should contain the text of your first product pitch, and have a “Send this email” setting of “Immediately.”

Similarly, you can edit your product pitch Sequence either from the Visual Automations builder directly (by clicking the Sequence in the Visual Automation), or from the main Sequence editor.

3. Contact receives a follow-up email one day later

In the same product pitch Sequence, add a second email containing the contents of your follow-up email.

Use the “Send this email” setting to set this second email to be sent one day after the previous email.

NOTE: Don’t forget to publish the emails in your Sequence! Otherwise, they will not be sent.

4. Contact is tagged with “Pitched”

After the step in your Visual Automation that adds subscribers to your product pitch Sequence, add a new step that tags them with “Pitched.”

5. Contact exits the classic automation

Almost there! Activate the Visual Automation, and you’re done. 🎉

Your Visual Automation will start running. When contacts finish going through all its steps, they'll exit it automatically.

Not sure how to migrate your Mailchimp classic automations to Kit? Contact our migrations team and they’ll be happy to help you out!

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