Mailchimp

Connecting Mailchimp lets your referral program work with the audience you already have. Bloop labels each contact as a referrer or referee, fills in their link, code, revenue, and successful-referral count, and marks each milestone as it happens — so you can segment advocates separately from newcomers and trigger automations the moment a referral converts.

Mailchimp expresses this in three building blocks: tags for instant segmentation, merge fields for standing details, and events for point-in-time triggers. Set it all up under Integrations → Mailchimp.

Best practice: Segment campaigns with the BLOOP Referrer and BLOOP Referee tags, and use events for automations you want to fire at a specific moment (such as a thank-you off BLOOP_Successful_Referral). Run the batch sync once after connecting so existing contacts carry tags and merge fields from day one — otherwise only customers active after connection will be segmentable.

Connecting Mailchimp

1. In Mailchimp, create an API key.
2. In Bloop, open Integrations → Mailchimp, paste the key, and choose the audience (list) you want Bloop to write to.
3. Enable the integration with the on/off toggle.

Bloop reads the Mailchimp server (data centre) from the suffix of your API key automatically — the part after the dash, such as us21 — so you don't enter it separately. Turning the toggle off pauses syncing without removing your settings. Live events require the Scale plan; on lower plans you can still connect and batch-sync your audience.

Events Bloop sends to Mailchimp

When a referral milestone happens, Bloop records an event on the contact in your audience. Use these to trigger Mailchimp automations or build segments.

Mailchimp event	Fires when	Event properties
BLOOP_Join_Program	A customer joins your referral program	BLOOP_Referral_Link, BLOOP_Referral_Code
BLOOP_Referral_Sharing	A referrer shares with a friend	BLOOP_Referral_Link, BLOOP_Referral_Code
BLOOP_Successful_Referral	A referral converts	BLOOP_Reward, BLOOP_Reward_Type
BLOOP_Referee_Receive_Discount	A referee receives their discount	BLOOP_Referee_discount_code

The reward-type property resolves to DISCOUNT, CREDIT, or CASH, matching how the referrer is rewarded.

Tags

Bloop tags each contact so you can segment your audience instantly:

• BLOOP Referrer — applied to referrers.
• BLOOP Referee — applied to referees.

A contact who is both gets both tags. The "referee receives discount" event tags the contact as a referee; the other events tag them as a referrer.

Merge fields

When syncing, Bloop creates these merge fields on your audience (if they don't already exist) and fills them in for referrers:

Merge field	Tag	Type	Holds
BLOOP Joining Date	JOINDATE	Date	When the referrer joined
BLOOP Referral Code	BLOOPCODE	Text	The referrer's referral code
BLOOP Referral Link	BLOOPLINK	Text	The referrer's unique link
BLOOP Referral Revenue	REVENUE	Text	Revenue attributed to their referrals
BLOOP Successful Referrals	SUCCESSREF	Number	Count of successful referrals
BLOOP Hub Portal	BLOOPHUB	Text	A permanent link to the referrer's personal referral hub

These are populated from referrer records, so a referee-only contact carries the BLOOP Referee tag without referrer merge values.

The BLOOPHUB merge field is a link that never expires, unlike the two-hour magic link in Bloop's own emails — so it works in a journey email that sends long after a referral. Drop *|BLOOPHUB|* onto a button to send advocates straight to their rewards, tiers, and share tools. Bloop adds the field to your connected audience automatically on the first sync.

What to do with this data

Tags and merge fields define who a contact is; events mark when something happened. Use tags to split your audience, merge fields to personalise within it, and events to start automations at the exact moment.

Bloop signal	Type	Use it to	Example
BLOOP Referrer tag	Tag	Segment all advocates for a dedicated campaign	A "thanks for being a referrer" campaign; exclude them from join invites
BLOOP Referee tag	Tag	Segment people who arrived via a friend	A tailored welcome that nods to how they found you
SUCCESSREF merge field	Merge field	Segment top referrers and personalise copy	"Referrers where SUCCESSREF ≥ 3" → VIP campaign; greet them by their count
REVENUE merge field	Merge field	Identify your highest-impact advocates	Spot the handful worth a personal thank-you
BLOOPLINK / BLOOPCODE merge fields	Merge field	Drop a referrer's own link/code into a campaign	A re-share nudge with their personal link pre-filled
BLOOP_Successful_Referral event	Event	Trigger a thank-you automation the instant a referral converts	A 1-email automation referencing BLOOP_Reward_Type
BLOOP_Referral_Sharing event	Event	Trigger a "thanks for sharing" follow-up	Wait, then re-prompt if they go quiet
BLOOP_Referee_Receive_Discount event	Event	Trigger a redemption reminder to the referee	"Your friend's discount is waiting"

Three plays cover most of the value:

• A referrer-only campaign. Build a segment on the BLOOP Referrer tag and speak to advocates differently from everyone else — recognise them, and never send them an invite to a program they already power.
• A top-referrer VIP segment. Segment on SUCCESSREF at or above a threshold. Merge fields update in place, so this segment stays current and you can personalise copy with the exact count.
• An instant thank-you automation. Start an automation from the BLOOP_Successful_Referral event so gratitude lands while the win is fresh, using BLOOP_Reward_Type to match wording to the reward.

Referrers are statistically your best customers — and they bring more like themselves. Research on roughly 10,000 accounts found referred customers about 18% less likely to churn and more profitable over their lifetime (Schmitt, Skiera & Van den Bulte, Journal of Marketing, 2011). A tag that isolates your advocates isolates the customers most worth your best email.

A worked example: a referrer VIP campaign

The thresholds below are illustrative — choose your own based on your volume.

You want a standing campaign that recognises your most active advocates and re-arms them to share again.

1. Sync first, so tags and fields exist for everyone. Connect Mailchimp and run the batch sync (below). Every existing referrer now carries the BLOOP Referrer tag and a SUCCESSREF value — not just contacts active after connection.
2. Build the segment from tag + merge field. In Mailchimp, create a segment: contacts tagged BLOOP Referrer and SUCCESSREF is greater than or equal to 3. This is your VIP advocate list, and it updates itself as people cross the threshold.
3. Personalise with merge fields. Your campaign greets each contact by their count and drops their own BLOOPLINK into the email so re-sharing is one click: "You've sent us 3 friends already — here's your link for the next one."
4. Add the moment with an event. Build an automation off the BLOOP_Successful_Referral event so each conversion gets an instant thank-you. The segment handles "who is a VIP today"; the event handles "a referral just landed." Both, not either.
5. Measure with REVENUE. Check the REVENUE field across the segment to see how much these advocates actually drive, and decide whether to widen the threshold or sweeten the reward.

Syncing your existing audience in batches

When you connect, you can sync existing referrers and referees into your Mailchimp audience. Bloop uses Mailchimp's batch API: it builds one set of operations (upsert each contact, then apply tags) and submits them as a single batch, then tracks that batch by ID.

A contact who is both a referrer and a referee is merged into one entry with both tags rather than synced twice.

Run this batch sync once, right after connecting. Skip it and only customers who hit a milestone after connection get tagged — so a "BLOOP Referrer" segment would miss your entire existing advocate base.

Checking batch status

A batch sync runs asynchronously on Mailchimp's side, so Bloop reports its progress by status:

Status	Meaning
pending	Submitted, not yet started
preprocessing	Mailchimp is preparing the operations
started	Operations are running
finalizing	Wrapping up
finished	Complete
errored	The batch failed

Bloop surfaces how many operations have finished versus errored, so you can confirm the sync landed. While a batch is running you can keep working. If the errored count is non-zero, check that your merge fields weren't already defined with conflicting types in Mailchimp before the sync, then re-run.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Triggering an automation off a tag instead of an event. A tag describes a standing state, not a moment. To fire a thank-you the instant a referral converts, start the automation from the BLOOP_Successful_Referral event.
• Segmenting off an event instead of a tag or merge field. An event-based segment captures only recent activity. Build durable advocate segments from the BLOOP Referrer tag and the SUCCESSREF merge field.
• Skipping the initial batch sync. Without it, existing referrers carry no tags or merge values, so referrer segments stay near-empty until customers hit a milestone again.
• Emailing advocates your "join the program" campaign. Forgetting to exclude the BLOOP Referrer tag sends a join invite to people already referring.
• Expecting live events on a lower plan. Live events require the Scale plan. On lower plans you can still connect and segment from synced tags and merge fields, but real-time event-triggered automations won't fire.

Related

• Klaviyo integration — the equivalent integration for Klaviyo.
• Referral analytics — the in-app view of the same referral performance you're syncing.
• Referral customers — the referrers and referees that become Mailchimp contacts.