How to connect 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 referral count, and marks each milestone as it happens.

Set it up under Settings → Integration → Mailchimp. The integration is available on the Premium plan (Scale on older plans); on lower plans the enable toggle stays locked.

Mailchimp expresses this in three building blocks: tags for instant segmentation, merge fields for standing details, and Customer Journey events for point-in-time triggers.

Best practice

Segment with the BLOOP Referrer / BLOOP Referee tags, and use events for automations that fire at a specific moment. Run the sync once after connecting so existing contacts carry tags and fields from day one.

Connecting Mailchimp

1. In Mailchimp, create an API key and copy the Audience ID of the audience you want Bloop to write to.
2. In Bloop, open the Mailchimp page and turn on the integration toggle — until it’s on, Connect is disabled.
3. Press Connect, enter the API key and Audience ID, then press Sync.

Bloop reads the Mailchimp data centre from your key automatically. Both fields are validated before anything is written, so a wrong audience is caught immediately rather than silently populating the wrong list.

Disconnect stops all syncing with Mailchimp and removes the saved API key. Contacts and data already in Mailchimp stay there, and you can connect again at any time.

That first sync is what carries your existing base across. Skip it and only customers who hit a milestone after connecting get tagged — a “BLOOP Referrer” segment would then miss everyone who joined before.

Watching the sync

Bloop writes your audience in a Mailchimp batch and reports it live: the batch id and its status (pending → finished, or errored), total operations, finished, and errored counts. View Mailchimp batch response opens the raw result when you need to see which contacts failed — the usual cause is a merge-field type conflict in Mailchimp.

A contact who is both a referrer and a referee is merged into a single entry.

Tags

Tag	Applied to
BLOOP Referrer	Anyone enrolled as an advocate
BLOOP Referee	Anyone who was referred
BLOOP Removed	Someone removed from the program — their BLOOP Referrer tag is deactivated at the same time

That last pair is what keeps a “current referrers” segment honest: removal doesn’t just stop the events, it flips the tags your segments are built on.

Merge fields

Merge field	Holds
*|BLOOPLINK|*	Their referral link
*|BLOOPCODE|*	Their referral code
*|REVENUE|*	Referral revenue they’ve generated
*|SUCCESSREF|*	Successful referral count
*|JOINDATE|*	When they joined
*|BLOOPHUB|*	A permanent link to their referral hub, safe in a journey email that sends long after the referral

Customer Journey events

Each event is a trigger you can start an automation from.

Mailchimp event	Fires when
BLOOP_Join_Program	A customer joins your referral program
BLOOP_Referral_Sharing	A referrer shares with a friend
BLOOP_Referral_Purchase_Pending	A friend purchased; the reward is under review
BLOOP_Successful_Referral	A referral converts (carries BLOOP_Reward_Type)
BLOOP_Referral_Made_Ineligible	A referral is rejected
BLOOP_Referee_Receive_Discount	A referee receives their discount
BLOOP_Removed_From_Program	A customer is removed from the program

Avoid double-sending

If you replace Bloop’s built-in emails with Mailchimp journeys, disable the matching emails in Email notifications so advocates don’t receive both.

Three high-value plays

• A referrer-only campaign. Segment on the BLOOP Referrer tag — never send a “join the program” invite to someone already in it.
• A top-referrer VIP segment. Segment on SUCCESSREF ≥ your threshold; it stays current as merge fields update.
• An instant thank-you automation. Start it from the BLOOP_Successful_Referral event, using BLOOP_Reward_Type to match the wording to the reward they actually got.

A worked example

Sync first so tags and merge fields exist for everyone. Build a segment (BLOOP Referrer tag and SUCCESSREF ≥ 3) for a standing VIP campaign personalised with *|BLOOPLINK|*, paired with a separate automation off the BLOOP_Successful_Referral event for an instant thank-you on each new conversion. The segment handles “who is a VIP today”; the event handles “a referral just landed.”

Multiple campaigns

Mailchimp merge fields hold one value per contact, so BLOOPLINK and BLOOPCODE carry the contact’s most recent campaign membership — not one field per campaign. Revenue and successful referrals are different: they’re totalled across every campaign the contact belongs to.

If you run several campaigns and need each one’s link in your emails, Klaviyo is the integration that models them separately.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Triggering an automation off a tag instead of an event. A tag is a standing state, not a moment — use the event to fire at the right instant.
• Segmenting off an event instead of a tag or merge field. Events only capture recent activity — build durable segments from tags and merge fields.
• Skipping the initial sync. Without it, existing referrers carry no tags for weeks.
• Ignoring errored operations. A failed batch row is a contact your segments will quietly miss.

Related

• Klaviyo integration — the equivalent integration for Klaviyo.
• Referral analytics — the in-app view of the same performance.