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All-in-one email marketing platform with automation, landing pages, and audience management for businesses of all sizes.
Full ReviewThe HubSpot CRM to Mailchimp workflow creates a seamless bridge between your contact management and email marketing operations. When sales teams update contact records, segment lists, or close deals in HubSpot, those changes automatically flow into Mailchimp audiences, ensuring your email campaigns always target the right people with the right messaging.
This integration works through multiple methods. HubSpot offers a native Mailchimp integration available in the HubSpot App Marketplace, which handles basic contact syncing and list management. For more advanced automation — such as triggering specific Mailchimp campaigns based on HubSpot deal stages or lifecycle changes — Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat) provide the middleware layer. Teams with developer resources can also connect the two via their respective REST APIs for fully custom data flows.
The business outcome is straightforward: marketing and sales alignment. Instead of manually exporting CSVs from HubSpot and importing them into Mailchimp, this workflow keeps audiences synchronized in real time. Sales teams close deals faster because prospects receive timely, relevant email sequences. Marketing teams see higher open rates and conversions because their lists reflect the latest CRM data.
| Step | Tool | Action | Connection to Next Step |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HubSpot CRM | Contact created, updated, or moved to new lifecycle stage | Webhook or native sync pushes contact data to Mailchimp |
| 2 | Mailchimp | Contact added to audience, tagged, or enrolled in automation | Email campaign delivered based on segment rules |
Start by identifying which HubSpot events should trigger a sync to Mailchimp. The most common triggers include new contact creation, lifecycle stage changes (subscriber to lead, lead to MQL, MQL to customer), deal stage progression, and list membership changes. In HubSpot, navigate to Settings > Integrations > Connected Apps and install the Mailchimp integration from the marketplace.
During setup, you will map HubSpot contact properties to Mailchimp merge fields. Essential mappings include Email (required), First Name, Last Name, Company, Phone, and any custom properties you use for segmentation. HubSpot lifecycle stages can be mapped to Mailchimp tags, which allows you to build segments in Mailchimp based on where contacts sit in your sales pipeline.
If using Zapier instead of the native integration, create a Zap with the trigger "New Contact" or "Updated Contact Property" in HubSpot. You can add filter steps to only sync contacts matching specific criteria — for example, only contacts with a lifecycle stage of "Marketing Qualified Lead" or contacts assigned to a particular sales team.
In Mailchimp, ensure your audience (list) is configured to accept incoming contacts from HubSpot. Go to Audience > Settings > Audience fields and merge tags to verify that all mapped fields exist. Create tags that correspond to your HubSpot lifecycle stages: "subscriber," "lead," "mql," "sql," "opportunity," and "customer."
Build automated email sequences (Customer Journeys in Mailchimp) that trigger based on these tags. For example, when a contact receives the "mql" tag, they enter a nurture sequence with case studies and product comparisons. When they receive the "customer" tag, they move into an onboarding sequence. Set up segments in Mailchimp using tag-based conditions so your broadcast campaigns also respect the CRM segmentation.
Configure Mailchimp's engagement data to flow back to HubSpot. Using the native integration or a reverse Zapier flow, push email open rates, click data, and unsubscribe events back into HubSpot contact records. This gives sales reps visibility into which emails a prospect has engaged with directly from the CRM contact timeline.
From HubSpot to Mailchimp: email address, first name, last name, company name, phone number, lifecycle stage (as tags), list membership, deal stage, custom contact properties mapped to merge fields, and contact owner information. The native integration syncs on a near-real-time basis, typically within 5-10 minutes of a change in HubSpot. Zapier-based flows trigger within 1-15 minutes depending on your Zapier plan.
From Mailchimp to HubSpot: email open events, click events with URLs, unsubscribe status, bounce data, campaign engagement scores, and automation enrollment status. This reverse flow typically updates via the native integration or a scheduled Zapier sync every 15 minutes.
SaaS trial-to-paid conversion: When a free trial user is created as a contact in HubSpot, they are automatically added to a Mailchimp drip campaign with onboarding tips, feature highlights, and upgrade prompts. When the deal closes in HubSpot, the contact is removed from the trial sequence and added to the paid customer welcome series.
Event-driven re-engagement: A sales rep updates a HubSpot contact's status to "stalled opportunity." This triggers a Mailchimp re-engagement sequence with fresh case studies, a limited-time discount, or an invitation to a product demo. If the contact clicks through, the engagement data flows back to HubSpot, alerting the sales rep to follow up.
Quarterly newsletter segmentation: Marketing sends different newsletter variants based on HubSpot lifecycle stages. Prospects get thought leadership content, active opportunities receive product-focused updates, and existing customers get feature announcements and upsell content — all managed automatically through synced tags.
Churn prevention: When a customer's HubSpot health score drops below a threshold, they are tagged in Mailchimp and enrolled in a retention campaign with personalized offers, training resources, and direct lines to their account manager.
Manual list management between a CRM and email platform typically consumes 3-5 hours per week for a mid-size marketing team. This includes exporting contacts, formatting CSVs, importing into Mailchimp, and verifying data accuracy. This workflow eliminates that entirely. Over a month, teams save 12-20 hours of repetitive data work. Additionally, the real-time sync means campaigns launch faster — no waiting for the next manual import cycle. Teams report a 15-25% improvement in email campaign relevance due to always-current segmentation data.
If you need deeper CRM-native email marketing, HubSpot's built-in Marketing Hub eliminates the need for Mailchimp entirely — though it comes at a higher price point. Salesforce users often pair with Pardot (Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) for tighter CRM-email integration. ActiveCampaign offers a combined CRM and email marketing platform that removes the need for two separate tools. For budget-conscious teams, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) offers both CRM and email features in a single platform with competitive pricing.
