How to Switch from Constant Contact
Switch from Constant Contact to experience the benefits of MailChimp’s affordable, powerful, and easy-to-use email marketing tools. To get started in MailChimp, you'll transfer contacts from your Constant Contact account with our List Import Builder.
In this article, you'll learn about important differences between MailChimp and Constant Contact, and the process you'll use to transfer contacts.
Before You Start
Here are some things to know before you begin this process.
- This is a multi-step process and it's important that you complete the steps in the order we give them to you.
- Constant Contact handles undeliverable addresses differently than we do, so be sure to filter undeliverable contacts before you import them into MailChimp.
Definitions
MailChimp and Constant Contact talk about your contacts and your lists differently. Refer to this chart to compare Constant Contact and MailChimp terms.
Constant Contact Term MailChimp Term
|
General Interest List |
List |
|
Segment (also called a Sublist) |
Group |
|
Contacts |
Subscribers |
|
Autoresponder |
Automation |
|
Campaign |
Campaign |
|
Template |
Template |
Filter Your Undeliverable Addresses
To keep your list healthy, MailChimp tracks and removes bounces and unsubscribes after each campaign send. This helps make sure you only send to active, engaged subscribers, and also lowers the cost of your monthly plan by eliminating duplicates and addresses you don’t send to.
Unfortunately, Constant Contact doesn’t manage addresses this way, so you’ll need to filter the undeliverable bounced addresses from your list before you can import it to MailChimp. To be extra safe, you can also import a suppression list to MailChimp to protect your sending reputation and permanently keep these undeliverable addresses out of your MailChimp list. After you start sending with us, we’ll handle bounces and unsubscribes.
Learn how to filter undeliverable addresses and prepare your list file for import.
Import Contacts to MailChimp
Although it’s common to have several email lists in Constant Contact, MailChimp works best with one master list, which is similar to your General Interest List. This makes the list management process simpler, and also keeps your subscriber count low, which can keep costs down.
After you prepare your list file for import, you’ll export Active Contacts and import them to your MailChimp list.
Learn how to import a Constant Contact list.
Recommended Reading
MailChimp is a self-service application, and our customer support features our online help portal, the Knowledge Base. Please read these recommended Knowledge Base articles now, or bookmark this page so you can read them after transfer your contacts to MailChimp.
Introduction to MailChimp
Learn the basics of MailChimp, and how to navigate around your account.
Signup Forms
To gather new subscribers, use MailChimp’s built-in signup forms and response emails or add a signup form to your website.
Campaigns and Templates
Learn how to choose a template and create a campaign in Mailchimp, and how to add images to your campaign.
Reports
To learn how your campaigns perform, check out MailChimp’s powerful report features.
Contact Support
Our Support Team works via chat and email only, but we provide extensive documentation, videos, GIFs, and screenshots in our Knowledge Base. If you need assistance, paid account users have access to email and live chat support with our award-winning support team.