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You know how it goes, you excitedly migrate to ConvertKit (or hire someone like me to handle it all for you). You’re full of excitement and ideas about all the ways you’re going to use ConvertKit to explode your business. Oh, but hang on a sec, you’re still paying for MailChimp… and even worse, you’ve still got a couple of stragglers mysteriously signing up there each month. Ack, remember that time you used to liberally sprinkle your eepurl.com/____ MailChimp signup link across the internet?
Ugh. This is a bit messy.
Do not just delete your MailChimp account.
I repeat, do not just delete your MailChimp account.
If you delete your MailChimp account:
- You will lose all that data, all those emails, all those reports, everything. Okay okay, maybe you’re better at letting go of digital clutter than I am…
- Every link in every MailChimp email you ever sent to your list will no longer work. This probably isn’t an issue for emails years ago, but it may be an issue for more recent emails and if you ever sent out a PDF or a course link or something.
- Those stragglers that somehow find their way to your MailChimp – you’ll just lose them into the abyss. Not a good impression for your business!
Over time I have developed the following system for keeping your MailChimp account, saving all that data, automatically moving across any straggler signups straight to ConvertKit. It’s a seamless experience for your subscribers and you can relax that you’re not losing anyone.
Step 1.
Create a form in ConvertKit corresponding to each list that may still get new subscribers in MailChimp. You don’t need to do any styling on it, so I’d usually just use the naked form. Make sure you turn the Incentive Email off. I’d advise calling the form something like ‘_____ from MailChimp’ or ‘____ (MailChimp). This way you can see in your graph on the dashboard how many people are actually still coming in through MailChimp.
The reason you want to turn the Incentive Email off is that usually in MailChimp they have to double opt-in, and they’ve already done that in MailChimp, so you don’t want them to have to do it again in ConvertKit.
Step 2.
Make sure that the forms have the correct associated automation. e.g. When someone subscribes to one of these new ‘from MailChimp’ forms, you’re probably going to want to tag them and add them to a sequence.
Step 3.
Create a free account at Zapier.com.
Set up a Zap so that whenever there is a new subscriber to a specific list in MailChimp, then you add them to the corresponding form in ConvertKit. Give this zap a sensible, list specific name.
Repeat for all other lists in MailChimp/forms in ConvertKit.
Note: On the free plan of Zapier you can move up to 100 people a month.
Step 4.
Now you’ve set up the Zaps in Zapier, anyone who comes in to MailChimp will automatically be going off to ConvertKit. If you’ve got autoresponders in MailChimp, you may well have people still going through them, and it’s easiest to leave them going through in MailChimp (as you’ve probably already migrated the subscribes across to ConvertKit).
If you have a paid MailChimp plan and autoresponder emails
Go into each MailChimp autoresponder in turn, go to the first email, check there is no-one in the queue, and then ‘Pause’ the email. You only need to do this for the first email in each autoresponder. This means that people who are already going through the autoresponder in MailChimp will continue to go through, but everyone else will just be queued up in MailChimp, but actually receive the sequence you’ve got in ConvertKit.
If you have a free MailChimp plan and use the Final Welcome Email
If you have a free MailChimp account and use the ‘Final Welcome Email’ to send the freebie opt-in, you just want to go in to the list Signup Forms and select to not send the Final Welcome Email. You want to set up that email as a sequence in ConvertKit that they receive when they are added to the form in Zapier.
Step 5.
If you have a free MailChimp account, you can skip this step.
If you have a paid MailChimp account, where you pay a set amount monthly, then you now want to switch it to a Pay As You Go (PAYG) plan.
Go to your picture/name top right, and go to Account. Next go to Billing, and then Monthly Plans or Credits. You want to change to PAYG and by the smallest amount (currently 300 credits for $9). By doing this you pay $9 one time, and no longer pay monthly. If you’ve got a lot of people still going through your autoresponders (or if you have a lot of autoresponder emails), then you may send more than 300 emails and need to purchase a higher number of credits. Click here to learn how to set that up automatically.
However, 300 is enough for most people. After people have finished working their way through your autoresponder emails, no more emails are going to be sent from MailChimp and you’re not actually going to be using those credits.
That’s it! You’re no longer paying monthly for MailChimp, you’ve still got all your MailChimp account and all the data, anyone new signing up may have to double opt-in in MailChimp, but then they get everything smoothly from ConvertKit, and you can now focus on growing your list in ConvertKit without worrying about MailChimp! Yay!
Couple of final notes:
- Not sure if you’ve got stragglers or which lists you need to be worrying about? On your MailChimp dashboard (first page when you login), scroll down to the bottom and take a look in the Chimp Chatter section.
- If you really don’t care about how many straggling MailChimp subscriber signups you have, or you don’t have any autoresponder sequences in MailChimp, instead of creating forms (Step 1), you can jump straight to Step 3 and add new subscribers to a ConvertKit tag (instead of a form).
- Do not delete your MailChimp account. There is no need to delete your MailChimp account.
Looking for more ConvertKit support? Check out ConvertKit Club – the only monthly membership site dedicated to supporting you to take your email marketing to the next level through the power of ConvertKit!
Alternatively, if you’re new to ConvertKit or even just considering it, check out my free 40 min A Beginner’s Guide to ConvertKit video.