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How to import your Mailchimp contacts into Kit
How to import your Mailchimp contacts into Kit

Bring your Mailchimp contacts over to Kit using our Mailchimp contacts importer or via a CSV import.

Updated this week

Move your Mailchimp contacts to their new home

If you’re importing your Mailchimp contacts into Kit, you have two options:

  1. Using our Mailchimp contacts importer

  2. Importing your Mailchimp contacts via a CSV file

Using our Mailchimp contacts importer will be the quicker and simpler approach. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to import all your Mailchimp contacts and the data relating to their Audiences, Groups, Tags, and geolocation.

However, if you want to bring over only certain lists of Mailchimp contacts (instead of all of your Mailchimp contacts), then you’ll need to import them via a CSV file.

So let’s go through both methods of importing your Mailchimp contacts 👇

Method 1: Importing your Mailchimp contacts using our Mailchimp contacts importer

Log into Kit and navigate to Subscribers under the Grow tab in the top navigation. Click the Add Subscribers button:

Select the Import from another provider option in the “Import Subscribers” window that pops up.

From the list of available providers, click Mailchimp.

You’ll be asked to provide your Mailchimp API key. Go grab it from your Mailchimp account (create it first if needed), then paste it into our form field for your API key.

NOTE: If you need to change the Mailchimp API key associated with your Kit account, contact support. We’ll help remove your existing Mailchimp API key so you can add the new one.

Click Continue import, followed by Start import on the next screen.

The import might take some time if you are importing a larger list. We’ll email you with a confirmation when the process is complete.

All your Mailchimp contacts can be found on the Subscribers page after the import. When you click the individual subscriber profiles, you’ll also be able to find your contacts’ geolocation, contact ratings, and so on.

And here are a few things to take note of:

Your Mailchimp contacts will have tags in Kit corresponding to their Mailchimp Audience, Segment, Group, and Tag

For example, if your Mailchimp contact had been in an Audience called “Photography Pros,” then we’ll tag your contact with “Photography Pros” when bringing them over to Kit.

The tags we add to your Mailchimp contacts will trigger any automation rules and visual automations that have such tags as a trigger or entry point respectively

Following from the same example above, if you have a visual automation that has the “Photography Pros” tag as an entry point, then your Mailchimp contact will be sent through that visual automation after we’ve tagged them with “Photography Pros.”

If you don’t want your Mailchimp contacts to be put through such rules or visual automations, then temporarily disable these rules or visual automations (or use this process) before starting the import.

Method 2: Importing your Mailchimp contacts via a CSV file

NOTE: At this time, the importing of your Mailchimp contacts’ geolocation, contact ratings, and subscribe dates via a CSV file is not supported.

Instead of using our Mailchimp importer, you can also import your Mailchimp contacts via a CSV file:

1. Export your Mailchimp contacts

First, export your Mailchimp contacts as a CSV file. You can export an entire list of all of your contacts in a certain Audience, or a list of only Mailchimp contacts in a certain Segment, Group, Tag, and so on.

Here’s where you’d export your entire Audience, for example:

2. Import your CSV file into Kit

Once you’ve obtained the CSV file of your Mailchimp contacts, navigate to Subscribers under the Grow tab in the top navigation.

Click the Add Subscribers button, followed by Import a CSV.

Upload your CSV file to our CSV file importer.

3. Map your Mailchimp contact data and tag your Mailchimp contacts

Next, map your Mailchimp contacts’ data to our contact fields.


For example, you’d map your Mailchimp contacts’ email addresses and first names to the “Email” and “First name” fields respectively.

You can also map your Mailchimp contacts’ custom fields to custom fields for your Kit subscribers. (Create these custom fields first as needed.)

After that, add tags to your Mailchimp contacts that correspond to their Mailchimp Audience, Segment, Group, or Tag, as needed. (Create such tags first if they haven’t already been created.)

For example, if you are bringing over your Mailchimp contacts in an Audience called “Photography Pros,” then add your Mailchimp contacts to a tag called “Photography Pros.”

Alternatively, if the contacts in your CSV file have a comma-separated list of tags, you can map your tags to our “Comma-separated list of tags” field instead.

Before adding tags to your imported Mailchimp contacts, don’t forget to temporarily disable any automation rules and visual automations that you don’t want to trigger!

4. Repeat the CSV import process to import all your Mailchimp contact data

Repeat steps 1 to 3 above for all the other Mailchimp lists that you want to import to Kit via a CSV file.

For example, if you’ve previously imported a list of all the Mailchimp contacts in a certain Audience, you can then repeat the process to import a list of all your Mailchimp contacts that have a certain Tag.

If we come across duplicate contacts during the import process, we’ll merge them to avoid double-counting.

However, if we encounter new subscriber data for fields that already contain data, we will replace such existing data in Kit with the new data. This includes replacing the existing data with blank values if your import file contains blank fields.

To learn more about importing subscribers via a CSV file, check out these articles:

Importing your Mailchimp contacts: a summary

Contact data to be imported

Can this data point(s) be imported by the Mailchimp importer?

Can this data point be imported via a CSV file?

Email address

Yes, it will be automatically imported to the subscriber’s “Email” field in Kit

Yes, map your contact’s email address to the “Email” field in Kit during the import

First name

Yes, it will be automatically imported to the subscriber’s “First name” field in Kit

Yes, map your contact’s first name to the “First name” field in Kit during the import

Custom fields

Yes, they will be automatically imported to the subscriber’s custom fields

Yes, map your contact’s custom fields to the custom fields in Kit during the import

Audience

Yes, it will be automatically added as a Kit tag to the subscriber

Yes, create a tag for the Audience and add your Mailchimp contacts to this tag during the import

Group

Yes, it will be automatically added as a Kit tag to the subscriber

Yes, create a tag for the Group and add your Mailchimp contacts to this tag during the import

Segment

Yes, it will be automatically added as a Kit tag to the subscriber

Yes, create a tag for the Segment and add your Mailchimp contacts to this tag during the import

Tag

Yes, it will be automatically added as a Kit tag to the subscriber

Yes, create a tag for the Tag and add your Mailchimp contacts to this tag during the import

Geolocation

Yes, it will be automatically imported to your contacts’ subscriber profiles in Kit

No

Contact rating

Yes, it will be automatically imported to your contacts’ subscriber profiles in Kit

No

Subscribe date

Yes, it will be automatically imported to your contacts’ subscriber profiles in Kit

No

Need a hand with importing your Mailchimp contacts? Reach out to our migrations team and they’ll be in touch!

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