How to connect Mailchimp

Available on

Every paid plan (Starter and up), and Premium and Scale on older plans. On the Free plan the Mailchimp Integration switch stays off and locked.

Connect Mailchimp to use your referral data in the audience you already email. Bloop tags each contact as a referrer or referee, adds their referral link, code and results as merge fields, and sends an event at each step of a referral. You can then build segments and Customer Journeys without exporting a CSV.

What you’ll set up

• A Mailchimp API key and the audience Bloop writes to
• Tags and merge fields on every referrer and referee in your program
• Customer Journey events to trigger automations
• A segment or journey that uses them

How it works

Bloop writes three things to your Mailchimp audience:

• Tags describe who someone is: a referrer, a referee, or removed from the program.
• Merge fields hold a referrer’s details: link, code, revenue, successful referrals, join date and hub link.
• Events mark a moment, such as a referral converting. Start a Customer Journey from them.

Best practice

Build segments from tags and merge fields, which describe standing facts. Start journeys from events, which describe moments. Mixing the two up is the most common reason a Mailchimp setup sends at the wrong time.

Before you connect

Bloop writes to one audience, and a sync changes every contact in it that is a referrer or referee. Read these two warnings before you choose the audience.

Warning

A sync sets every referrer and referee to Subscribed, including contacts who had unsubscribed or were waiting to confirm. Those contacts can then receive your Mailchimp campaigns although they didn’t agree to marketing email. If your audience holds unsubscribed customers, connect a separate audience used only for referral email, and check the consent rules that apply to your store.

Warning

A sync also empties First Name, Last Name, Address, Phone Number, Birthday and Company on those contacts. If the audience already holds this data, for example from Shopify’s own Mailchimp connection, the sync erases it. Use a separate audience for Bloop, or export your audience before you sync so you can restore it.

How to connect Mailchimp

1. Get your Mailchimp details

   1. In Mailchimp, create an API key under Profile → Extras → API keys, and copy it.
   2. Open the audience Bloop should write to, and copy its Audience ID from Settings → Audience name and defaults.

2. Connect Bloop to Mailchimp → Click Sync

   1. In Bloop, go to Settings → Store-wide → Integrations, then click Integrate on Mailchimp.

   2. Turn on Mailchimp Integration. Connect stays disabled until it’s on.

   3. Click Connect:

      

   4. Paste your key into API key.

   5. Paste your Audience ID into Audience id.

   6. Click Sync:

      

   Sync checks the key and the audience, saves them, and sends every referrer and referee in your store to Mailchimp in one batch. There is no separate connect step. If the key or the Audience ID is wrong, Bloop marks the field as invalid and writes nothing to Mailchimp.

   Check it worked

   The page now shows Disconnect next to Connect, and a Set up Mailchimp journeys card. In Mailchimp, filter the audience by the BLOOP Referrer tag to see your referrers.

While the sync runs

The dialog shows the batch and its status, a progress bar, and the Total operations, Finished and Errored counts. When the batch finishes, View Mailchimp batch response opens Mailchimp’s result file, which lists the contacts that failed and why. The usual cause is a merge field that already exists in your audience with a different type. Each errored operation is a contact your segments miss, so fix the cause and sync again.

Closing the dialog only hides the progress. The batch keeps running in Mailchimp.

A contact who is both a referrer and a referee gets one entry with both tags.

Sync again, pause or disconnect

• Sync again: Bloop doesn’t re-sync on a schedule. To refresh every contact, click Connect (it stays next to Disconnect, with your saved key and Audience id already filled in), then click Sync. Both warnings above apply to each sync.
• Pause: Turning off Mailchimp Integration stops events and tag updates. Your key stays saved.
• Disconnect (1) stops all syncing, removes the saved key and Audience ID, and turns the switch off. Contacts, tags and fields already in Mailchimp stay there, and you can connect again at any time.

The Set up Mailchimp journeys card (2) lists the merge fields, tags and events Bloop writes. The tables below add what each one holds.

Tags

Tag	Applied to
BLOOP Referrer	Every referrer
BLOOP Referee	Every referred friend, at sync and when they receive their discount
BLOOP Removed	A referrer removed from the program. Their BLOOP Referrer tag is turned off at the same time

If you restore a removed referrer in the Fraud Center, Bloop turns BLOOP Referrer back on and BLOOP Removed off. A “current referrers” segment built on these tags stays accurate without manual cleanup.

Merge fields

Bloop creates these fields in your audience the first time it needs them. They’re filled for referrers only. A referee’s contact carries the tag but no BLOOP merge fields.

Merge tag	Field name in Mailchimp	Holds
*|BLOOPLINK|*	BLOOP Referral Link	Their referral link
*|BLOOPCODE|*	BLOOP Referral Code	Their referral code
*|REVENUE|*	BLOOP Referral Revenue	Referral revenue across all campaigns, as text in your store currency
*|SUCCESSREF|*	BLOOP Successful Referrals	Successful referrals across all campaigns, as a number
*|JOINDATE|*	BLOOP Joining Date	When they first joined your program
*|BLOOPHUB|*	BLOOP Hub Portal	A permanent link to their referral hub that signs them in, so it still works in an email sent weeks later

REVENUE is text, so Mailchimp can’t segment on it with “greater than”. Segment on SUCCESSREF instead.

Merge fields refresh when a referrer joins, shares by email, earns a reward, or a friend receives a discount, and on every sync. Pending, declined and removal events don’t refresh them.

Note

Mailchimp allows 30 merge fields per audience. If yours is full, Bloop skips the fields it can’t create, and those values stay empty. Free up fields in Mailchimp, then sync again.

Customer Journey events

Each event can start a Customer Journey.

Event	Sent when
BLOOP_Join_Program	A customer joins your program for the first time. Joining a second campaign doesn’t send it again
BLOOP_Referral_Sharing	A referrer invites a friend with the share-by-email form. Social shares and copied links don’t send it
BLOOP_Referral_Purchase_Pending	A friend’s order is waiting on review or a reward delay
BLOOP_Successful_Referral	A referral converts and the referrer earns a reward
BLOOP_Referral_Made_Ineligible	A referral is rejected
BLOOP_Referee_Receive_Discount	A referred friend receives their discount
BLOOP_Removed_From_Program	A referrer is removed from the program

Use these properties in a journey’s conditions and emails:

Property	On event	Holds
BLOOP_Referral_Link, BLOOP_Referral_Code	Join, Sharing	The referrer’s link and code
BLOOP_Purchase_Amount, BLOOP_Currency	Purchase Pending	The friend’s order amount
BLOOP_Reward	Successful Referral	The reward code or amount
BLOOP_Reward_Type	Successful Referral	DISCOUNT, CREDIT, CASH, CUSTOM or FREE_PRODUCT
BLOOP_Reason	Made Ineligible	Why the referral was rejected
BLOOP_Referee_discount_code	Referee Receive Discount	The friend’s discount code

Events go to the referrer’s contact, except BLOOP_Referee_Receive_Discount, which goes to the friend. A contact that isn’t in the audience yet is added as Subscribed, so the consent warning in Before you connect applies to events too. Leaving a single campaign sends no event.

Important

If a Mailchimp journey replaces one of Bloop’s emails, turn off the matching email in the campaign’s Emails step. Otherwise the customer gets both.

Multiple campaigns

A merge field holds one value per contact, so BLOOPLINK and BLOOPCODE show the link and code of the campaign the referrer was most recently updated in, not one per campaign. REVENUE and SUCCESSREF add up every campaign.

If you run several campaigns and need each one’s link in your emails, use Klaviyo, which keeps a link and code per campaign.

Three high-value plays

• A referrer-only newsletter. Segment on the BLOOP Referrer tag, so you never invite someone who already refers to join.
• A VIP segment. Segment on the BLOOP Referrer tag and SUCCESSREF of 3 or more, and send them a campaign with *|BLOOPLINK|*. The segment updates as referrals land.
• An instant thank-you. Start a journey from BLOOP_Successful_Referral and branch on BLOOP_Reward_Type, so the wording matches the reward they got. This journey replaces Bloop’s Successful rewards email, so turn that email off.

Related

• Klaviyo integration - the same data in Klaviyo, with a link per campaign
• Referral email notifications - turn off a Bloop email that a journey replaces
• Referral hub - where BLOOPHUB signs referrers in