Importing Mailchimp contacts into Trackdrop

Sending promos to your contacts with Trackdrop is simple for Mailchimp users.

There are two ways to bring your contacts across: you can connect your Mailchimp account directly (the quickest option), or export your contacts as a CSV and upload them manually.

Import directly from Mailchimp

This is the quickest option. No exporting or file-handling needed. Trackdrop connects to your Mailchimp account, lets you pick an audience, and imports your subscribed contacts in the background.

Step one: Open the importer

Log in to Trackdrop and click Audience in the sidebar on the left. 

Click the Add contacts button near the top of the screen, then click Import from Mailchimp.

Step two: Connect your Mailchimp account

Click Connect Mailchimp. A popup will open. Log in to Mailchimp and authorise the connection.
Once authorised, the popup will close automatically and you'll move to the next step.

Step three: Pick an audience

Trackdrop will load a list of your Mailchimp audiences, along with the number of subscribed contacts in each. Click the one you'd like to import.

Step four: Tag and import

You'll see a summary of the selected audience, including how many contacts will be imported. Only subscribed contacts are included; unsubscribed, cleaned, and pending contacts are skipped automatically.

Optionally, add tags to help organise the contacts you're importing. The audience name is pre-filled as a tag, but you can add or remove tags as needed.

Click Import [N] contacts to start. Trackdrop will import your contacts in the background. This may take a few minutes for large audiences.

Once your contacts have been imported, you're ready to create and send your first promo!

Import via CSV

If you've already exported your contacts from Mailchimp, or prefer to review the data before importing, you can upload a CSV file instead.

Step one: Export your contacts from Mailchimp

1. Log in to your Mailchimp account.

2. Click Audience in the left sidebar, then select All contacts.
   Optional: click Columns to customise the data you export.

3. Click Export Audience (top-right of the contacts table).
   Mailchimp will prepare a ZIP file and email you a download link, or let you download it directly from the page.

4. Unzip the file. Inside, you'll find a CSV named something like audience_export_*.csv.

5. This CSV file is what you'll upload to Trackdrop.

Step two: Upload the CSV to Trackdrop

1. Log in to Trackdrop and click Audience in the sidebar on the left.

2. Click the Add contacts button near the top of the screen, then click Import from CSV.

3. Drag the exported CSV file into the upload area, or click to browse for it.

4. On the Map columns step, Trackdrop will automatically map your Email Address column to Email. For the Name field, see the next section below.

5. Click Continue.

6. On the Bulk tags step, you can optionally add tags to help organise your audience. Any tags you add here will be applied to all the contacts in this import. You can skip this step and tag contacts later if you prefer.

7. Click Import contacts to finish.

Why isn't my contact name mapped automatically?

Mailchimp exports first and last name as two separate columns (First Name and Last Name), but Trackdrop stores a single Name field.

Because neither column is an exact match, you'll need to select which one to use. You have two options:

Option A: Select one column (quickest)

On the Map columns step, find the Name row and use the radio buttons to select either First Name or Last Name. Leave the other unmapped. Your contacts will be imported with whichever value you chose.

Option B: Combine first and last name before importing

Before uploading, open the CSV in a spreadsheet app (e.g. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers) and create a new column called Name that combines the two.

You can type names in manually, or use a formula. Assuming Name is column A, First Name is column B, and Last Name is column C: enter =B2&" "&C2 into cell A2, then copy the formula down through the remaining rows.

Once you've created the combined Name column, save the file as a CSV and upload it. Trackdrop will auto-map the Name column, and each contact will be imported with their full name.

Common issues

I see "Required fields not mapped" when trying to import.

Make sure the Email column is mapped on the Map columns step. It's the only required field.

My file won't upload.

Check that the file ends in .csv. Mailchimp's export comes inside a ZIP file, so make sure you've extracted the CSV before uploading.

I see ‘No data rows found’.

Open your CSV in a spreadsheet app and check that there's at least one contact row beneath the header row.

I'm seeing duplicate contacts.

Trackdrop skips any contact whose email address already exists in your audience, so it's safe to re-import. No duplicates will be created.