Marketing and Sales

A Full Guide on Exporting MailChimp Lists and Email Templates to SendPulse

6 minutes

A Full Guide on Exporting MailChimp Lists and Email Templates to SendPulse

In May 2019, MailChimp released an update that forced some of its users to start searching for another email service provider. Many of them have chosen SendPulse as an alternative, which is, of course, a great pleasure but also a great responsibility for us.

To help you easily transfer from MailChimp to SendPulse, we are publishing a detailed instruction on how to export contacts and templates from one service to another. For users who are going to move from a paid MailChimp plan, SendPulse offers two months of the same plan for free! You will find the details of this offer below.

How to export MailChimp lists of subscribers to SendPulse

There are two ways to export MailChimp lists and import them to SendPulse. The first one is by importing email addresses via our API and the second is by exporting Audiences from MailChimp to a CSV file and uploading them to SendPulse with the help of the import button. Let’s walk through each method step-by-step.

Exporting contacts via API

Step 1. Log into your MailChimp account and proceed to the Profile tab.

mailchimp profile tab
Opening your MailChimp profile

Step 2. In the top menu, click Extras > API keys.

mailchimp api keys
Opening the API keys

Step 3. Copy the long API key code.

mailchimp api key
Copying the API key

Step 4. Log into your SendPulse account, go to the Mailing lists tab, and create a mailing list to which you will import your contacts from MailChimp. In our example, it’s called “MailChimp Audience.”

Then click “Import from” and paste your API key and click “Get mailing lists.”

MailChimp export list via API
MailChimp export list via API

Step 5. You will see the available address books from MailChimp. Choose the list you wish to import and click “Upload.”

Uploading Audiences
Uploading Audiences from MailChimp to SendPulse via API

Step 6. Choose the variables you need in each column and click “Add.”

choosing variables
Choosing variables for a mailing list

Step 7. The mailing list has been added to SendPulse. Now click “View contacts” to take a closer look at your mailing list.

notification about successful export of contacts
Notification about successful export of contacts from MailChimp to SendPulse

Step 8. Now the exported MailChimp list is available in your SendPulse account. The addresses from the list are active and can be used for your further email campaigns.

exported MailChimp list
Checking the mailing list added to SendPulse

To export other MailChimp lists, you need to repeat the following steps: create a new mailing list in SendPulse, paste the API key, and choose the audience you want to import. This way, you will be able to recreate your MailChimp mailing lists in SendPulse.

Exporting contacts using a CSV file

To move your contacts using a CSV file, first, you need to export your “Audience” from MailChimp and then upload it to the “Mailing lists” in SendPulse. Every Audience list should be transferred separately, one after another.

This is how to do it step by step:

Step 1. Go to your MailChimp account and proceed to the “Audience” section. To see all of your lists, choose “View audiences” from the “View Contacts” drop-down.

MailChimp Audience section
Audience section in MailChimp

Step 2. Click on the name of the audience you want to export to see the contacts it contains.

list of contacts
A list of contacts from MailChimp Audiences

Step 3. Above the list, there’s the “Export Audience” button. Click it to start the export process.

Exporting contacts
Exporting contacts from MailChimp Audiences

Step 4. The export can take time, especially if you have a lot of contacts. While the export is going on, the timer icon will be highlighted in yellow. As soon as it’s over, the icon will become blue. The list of contacts will be saved on your computer and will be sent to the email address you’ve registered.

export completed
MailChimp Audiences export completed

Step 5. To download the CSV file, open the email from MailChimp and click “Download List Data.”

link to download mailing list data
An email from MailChimp with the link to download the mailing list data

Step 6. The downloaded file will be archived, so you will need to extract it before importing contacts to SendPulse.

downloaded list of contacts
Downloaded list of contacts from MailChimp

When you open the extracted file in Excel, you will see a spreadsheet that looks like this:

CSV file with exported contacts
CSV file with exported contacts opened in Excel

Step 7. Now let’s upload this file to SendPulse. First, go to your SendPulse account and click “Mailing lists.” We’ve already created the “MailChimp Audience CSV” list. To create a new list, click “New mailing list.”

Adding mailing list
Adding a mailing list to SendPulse

Step 8. The new list has no contacts yet. To add exported contacts, click the “Upload file” tab. Choose the CSV file you’ve downloaded from MailChimp and then click “Upload.”

Uploading CSV file
Uploading a CSV file from MailChimp to SendPulse

Step 9. The data is uploaded to SendPulse, but you still need to choose the variables for the actual contacts to appear on your mailing list.

coosing variables
Choosing variables for the mailing list in SendPulse

Step 10. Once you’ve chosen the variables, tick “Update variable values” for existing contacts box and click “Add.”

updating variables
Updating the mailing list variables

Step 11. Finally, the import is completed and you can see the number of added emails.

successful contacts import
Notification about successful contacts import

Now you can go to your mailing list and see all your contacts.

list of imported contacts
Checking imported contacts in SendPulse

These steps can be repeated for every mailing list you wish to export from MailChimp.

How to export MailChimp templates to SendPulse

If you’ve created your own email templates with MailChimp, you can transfer them to SendPulse too. This is how to do it:

Step 1. Open Templates in your MailChimp account. Check the template you want to export and click “Export as HTML.”

templates library
A list of email templates in MailChimp

The template will be saved to your computer.

downloaded html file
Exporting HTML template

Step 2. Go to your SendPulse account, proceed to “Email templates,” and choose the “Template import” option.

template import
Import of an HTML template to SendPulse

Step 3. In the “Upload a file” section, click “Choose File,” upload your MailChimp template, name it, and click “Upload.”

uploading html template
Uploading an HTML template to SendPulse

You will see a notification about a successful import. Click “Ok” to proceed.

successful template import
Notification about a successful email template import to SendPulse

Step 4. Note! You need to change the unsubscription link in the email footer so that it will lead to the correct SendPulse page. For that, open an imported template, find the unsubscription link and click “Insert/Edit link” icon in the upper menu to see how the link looks.

unsubscription link code
Changing the code of the unsubscription link in a template imported from MailChimp

Open any SendPulse pre-designed template and copy and paste the unsubscribe link from it to your new template.

unsubscription link code
Changing the unsubscription code in the imported template

Done! Now you can find this email template in your library.

template library
The imported template in the SendPulse library

Free plan for those who are moving from MailChimp to SendPulse

If you are moving from a paid MailChimp plan, SendPulse gives you two months of the same plan for free. This time will be enough to transfer all your contacts and templates and try out the service.

To receive a free plan, copy the payment information about your MailChimp paid plan and send it along with the following text to sales@sendpulse.com:

We would like to move from a paid MailChimp plan to SendPulse. A screenshot with payment details of the paid MailChimp plan is attached. Please provide us with two free months of the same plan.

If anything goes wrong or you have any questions, contact our support team, which is available 24/7.

We would like to remind you that SendPulse is a multichannel platform, where you can send email campaigns, SMS, and Viber messages, set up web push notifications, and Facebook Messenger chatbots. There’s a lot of useful videos on our YouTube channel and announcements about new features and updates on our Facebook page — sign up and be the first to know about them!

Date of publication:

19 Jun. 2019

Daria Stratovich

Being always on the road, I consider myself a thrill-seeking traveler. I draw inspiration from fresh experiences and meeting new...

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