Mail Chimp and Shopify Break Up – What It Means For You
If you use Mailchimp and Shopify then you’ve probably heard the news that they’ve ended their relationship and will only be talking through third party integrations from now on. Boo! The two key things you need to know are: 1 - Mailchimp and Shopify direct integration is no longer available to NEW users. 2 - EXISTING users have until May 12 to choose whether they will adopt a third party solution or move to another platform that offers a one-click integration. Of course this means that small business owners are caught in the middle and now need to decide whether to stay with Mailchimp or find another Email Service Provider. Here’s the low down on what went down … According to Mailchimp, it’s about maintaining the privacy of their customer’s data after Shopify updated their terms to gain access to any data Mailchimp collects about its users, including data it collected in the past. And Shopify argue that by not sharing key data it’s giving their merchants (shop owners) a poor experience because they won’t have complete oversight into their business or customer data. So what are your options? Before we look at these, here’s a few questions to ask yourself: Q1. Why did you choose Mailchimp in the first place? Q2. Up until now, has Mailchimp met your email marketing needs? Q3. Are you an expert user and possibly hitting your head on the ceiling a bit with its functionality, or are you still learning the ropes? It’s easy to get caught up in other people's comments and opinions because you’ll read everything from those wanting to jump ship to those that don’t think it’s a big deal. So, what are YOUR options? Well, there’s essentially two … stay or go. Let's look at both. Option 1 | Stay If you’re thinking of staying then Mailchimp are offering 3 work-arounds … THIRD PARTY INTEGRATIONS The most popular of these is adopting and using third party integrations such as Zapier, Automate or ShopSync. The pros are that you’ll be able to sync your store data and trigger automations. The added bonus is that you won’t have to deal with researching, choosing and migrating to another platform. The cons are that Zapier and Automate consider Shopify a ‘Premium App’ which means you’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use each of them. On the other hand, ShopSync is free. MANUAL UPLOAD Yes, Mailchimp are suggesting that you manually upload your data. Ummm … the 00’s called and it wants its workaround...
