Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a hosted shopping cart solution that makes it easy to set up an online store in minutes and sell your products with style.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an easy-to-use email marketing service that makes it fun to design, schedule and deliver email newsletters to your customers.

Why did you make Chimpified?

Chimpified is a service of Terra Firma Design & Consulting, an Internet design, marketing and consulting firm. Shopify is our favorite shopping cart solution, and Mailchimp is our favorite email marketing solution.

When we learned that in order to add customers to their mailing lists, our clients were having to export a CSV file from their Shopify store, then turn around and import them back into Mailchimp, it seemed to us like this was a problem that needed to be solved.

The result is Chimpified, and after some great feedback from Shopify, Mailchimp and some merchants that helped us with testing we officially released Chimpified as a service in early 2010.

How does it work?

Chimpified works by helping to facilitate communication between your Shopify store and your Mailchimp account. Because both Shopify and Mailchimp provide robust API's, or application programming interfaces, and also have event-driven webhooks, Chimpified is able to send and receive data from both services.

↑ Back to top

Installation Questions

How do I install Chimpified?

You can install Chimpified from the Shopify App Store, or you can simply login to Chimpified to install. The first time that you login, you will be asked for permission to install Chimpified to your Shopify store. The installation and setup process takes about a minute:

1. Login to initiate the installation process.
2. Provide your Mailchimp API key.
3. Select the subscriber list(s) you would like your customers added to.
4. Select the monthly plan that best fits your needs.

Once installed, Chimpified will show up in your Shopify store admin under Preferences > Applications. You can login to Chimpified at any time to change settings or to upgrade or downgrade your monthly plan.

Show me how to install and configure Chimpified

Where do I find my Mailchimp API key?

You can find your Mailchimp API key by logging in to your Mailchimp account and visiting Account > API Keys & Info. If you have not generated an API key yet, simply click the link to “add a key” and a key will be generated for you. Just copy your API key and paste it into Chimpified and your Shopify store will be connected to your Mailchimp account.

Show me how to find my Mailchimp API key

How do I uninstall Chimpified?

To uninstall Chimpified, simply login to your Shopify store, visit Preferences > Applications and find Chimpified in the list of applications installed on your store. All you need to do is click the “Remove” button to uninstall Chimpified. You will also want to remove the order notification that was created when we set up Chimpified by visiting Preferences > Email & Notifications and removing the webhook to Chimpified.

Show me how to uninstall Chimpified

↑ Back to top

Billing Questions

What's with the 30 day free trial?

When you first install Chimpified, you will have 30 days to “test drive” all of the available features for free. You can decide whether or not to upgrade to one of our paid plans at any time.

What happens after the 30 day free trial period?

Nothing. If you have not upgraded to one of our paid plans, Chimpified will continue to sync your store with Mailchimp, but the additional features will no longer be available to you. Simply upgrade to a paid plan at any time to add more features.

Can I use it for free?

Absolutely. Our free plan provides a connection between your Shopify store and Mailchimp account, which offers a hassle-free way for store owners to build their email marketing lists.

Do I need a credit card to install?

Nope. You can install Chimpified for free, and if you upgrade your plan later, a charge will appear on your monthly invoice from Shopify.

Can I change my plan at any time?

Of course. Upgrade your plan to add more features, or downgrade your plan to save money at any time.

Can I cancel at any time?

Of course. At any time you can change to our free plan, which will eliminate any monthly charges. Or, you can also choose to uninstall Chimpified completely as well.

How will I be billed?

Billing is handled through Shopify, and you will be billed directly through them. When you upgrade to one of our paid plans, you will see an additional charge on your monthly invoice from Shopify. Please note that we are unable to prorate when plans are downgraded.

↑ Back to top

Sync With Mailchimp

How do I sync my store with my Mailchimp account?

All you have to do is install Chimpified on your Shopify store, enter your Mailchimp API key and that's it! Simply select the list(s) that you want your customers to be added to, and you are done!

What does Shopify send to Mailchimp?

When an order is completed at your store, your store sends Chimpified information about that order. Chimpified then relays your customer's name and email address to Mailchimp, and adds them to the list(s) that you selected (if they agreed to receive marketing materials from you).

When Ecommerce 360 tracking is enabled, Chimpified also determines whether or not the order originated from an email campaign, and if it did will relay order information back to Mailchimp. This information is then made available in the Ecommerce 360 report for the campaign that generated the order.

What does Mailchimp send to Shopify?

When you customers completed their order at your Shopify store, they were asked if they want to receive marketing materials from you. They are only added to your mailing list(s) if they agree, but what happens when they unsubscribe to your emails later on?

When you choose a list for sync in Chimpified, web hooks are automatically added to your list that send a notification to Chimpified when certain actions occur. When someone unsubscribes from your mailing lists, Chimpified will update your Shopify store to reflect that a customer has updated their preferences. Additionally, Chimpified will also attempt to update a customer's email address in the event that it is changed in Mailchimp.

* NOTE: Due to a limitation imposed by the Shopify API, only the most recent 250 orders can be accessed by Chimpified. Older orders cannot be updated to reflect that a customer does not want to receive marketing materials.

How does the sync work?

The sync works because both Shopify and Mailchimp provide both robust API's Application Programming Interfaces as well as webhooks. When particular events occur at either service, such as an order at your Shopify store or an unsubscribe at Mailchimp, these webhooks notify Chimpified what about what has happened. Chimpified then takes that information, processes it, and updates the other service via the API.

Can I use autoresponders in Mailchimp?

Of course! However, you will need to add a date field to your lists called ADDED_ON. Chimpified will automatically insert the date that the person was subscribed to the list, giving you a date to trigger your autoresponders. This is required because Mailchimp does not allow autoresponders to be triggered by subscribers added through their admin interface or the API. In the future, we will be adding a Merge Tag Manager feature that will assist merchants in collecting extra information about their customers.

Quick Tip: Send your first-time customers a coupon or special offer automatically. By creating a list only for your customers (don't forget to add the ADDED_ON field), you can set up an autoresponder in Mailchimp that will automatically send a coupon or other marketing email to your customers after a pre-determined period of time. Generating repeat business has never been easier!

VIDEO: Reach first-time buyers using autoresponders

↑ Back to top

Ecommerce 360 Integration

What is Ecommerce 360 integration?

When an order is placed at your store, Chimpified will try and determine if the order was generated from a marketing email campaign. If so, Chimpified will send information about the order to your Mailchimp account, where conversion and sales data will be available in your campaign reports.

As you can see, gauging the ROI (Return on Investment) of your marketing efforts has never been easier!

Add Ecommerce 360 tracking to your campaigns

How does Ecommerce 360 work?

Ecommerce 360 tracking works because both Mailchimp and Shopify are great! Seriously though, it starts at Mailchimp when you add Ecommerce 360 tracking to your campaign. When your email campaign is delivered, the links to your Shopify store have special variables added to them that identify both the campaign and the individual email address of the person visiting your store.

From here, Shopify takes over for a little while. When someone visits your store, and subsequently adds something to their shopping cart, Shopify sets a cookie that will persist for a couple of weeks. When that person then completes an order, and this cookie is present, the special variables that Mailchimp added earlier are stored along with that order.

Once that order is completed, Shopify then sends an order notification to Chimpified with information about that order, including the special Ecommerce 360 variables that were stored with the order. Chimpified looks for these variables, and if they are present, relays information to Mailchimp to associate the order with the campaign that generated it.

Finally, when you check your campaign reports at Mailchimp, sales and conversion information for that campaign will be shown under the “Ecommerce 360” section.

How do I get Ecommerce 360 reports?

When you create your email marketing campaigns at Mailchimp, simply select the option to “Add Ecommerce 360 Tracking to all URLs” in your campaign. Later, when you check your campaign report, sales and conversion data will be displayed to you (see above).

View a sample Ecommerce 360 report

↑ Back to top

Compose Campaigns

How does Chimpified help me compose campaigns?

Chimpified helps you to compose email marketing campaigns by facilitating the process of creating a campaign by automatically injecting content into your email campaigns. When you choose to promote a product, for example, all the information about that product (including one image) is automatically injected into a basic template that we provide, or choose one of your own templates.

What links are added to my Shopify store?

When you install Chimpified on your Shopify store, “Email using Mailchimp” links are added to your product, collection, blog and page detail pages. Additionally, when you select multiple products on your product overview page, you can select to “Email these products using Mailchimp” in the actions drop-down menu.

Why do I have to finish my campaigns in Mailchimp?

While Chimpified helps to streamline the process of creating promotional email campaigns, there are certain features that Mailchimp offers that cannot be accessed via the API. Because of this, we felt that it was important for merchants to review their campaigns at Mailchimp in order to ensure that they get the most out of Mailchimp. For every campaign, we recommend that merchants:

• Add Google Analytics.
• Adding Ecommerce 360 tracking.
• Make changes to and preview their email.
• Schedule their email for delivery.

Can I use Mailchimp templates?

Yes. However, Chimpified can only access the templates that appear under the “My Templates” section in Mailchimp. Of course, all you have to do is create a new template based on one of Mailchimp's pre-built templates, save it, and it will be available for use with Chimpified. Choose that template when you are composing your campaign, and content will be injected into it for you.

Using Mailchimp templates

Can I use custom templates?

Absolutely. In fact, even though we offer basic templates to get started with, we assume that most Shopify store owners will want to use custom templates that are branded to their business. When you create a template in Mailchimp, it will be available for use in Chimpified.

Using custom templates

Please note that templates built in Mailchimp must have at least one editable region in them, otherwise we will be unable to inject content. The convention at Mailchimp is to have the main editable region of a template called “main”, and Chimpified prefers this as well. However, any editable regions will work, and you will be given the opportunity to select which region of your template content will be injected into.

Where can I get custom, branded templates?

Chimpified is a service of Terra Firma Design & Consulting, an Internet design, marketing and consulting firm. Simply contact us and we'd be happy to help you with template design and coding. Additionally, you can refer to the Mailchimp Experts Exchange to find a qualifed Mailchimp expert to help you.

↑ Back to top