Mailchimp: Email & SMS

Hi there, if you installed the ShopSync app prior to 4/4/19, our app was engineered to include past customers who "Accept email marketing", orders, and products in Shopify. If they showed unsubscribed in Shopify, we ignored the email. In other words, we looked at Shopify as the "truth" and nothing else. Although our intentions for this were done for all the right reasons, it, unfortunately, didn't work for everyone as you saw with your subscriber counts going up. With how we used to perform the initial sync, it would have been possible to re-subscribe users if they had opted out from a Mailchimp list previously. Or, it's also possible the old integration missed real subscribers with how it was designed. Now, we've changed up how we handle the data from Shopify to Mailchimp on the initial sync. Here's more information on how it works: Before any data is processed by ShopSync, we perform integrity checks with Mailchimp to ensure these customers can be sent to the list that is connected. For example, if someone opted out of a list in the past, we won't add the email again. We'll also update Shopify with the correct status that Mailchimp shows. That way, the most current subscriber status in Mailchimp is synced with the store. After the initial sync is complete, we'll continue adding customers, orders, and products from your store to Mailchimp as transactions occur. We'll add customers that visit your store who are deemed transactional as well. That way, you can use Mailchimp's automations to trigger abandoned carts and order notifications. If someone unsubscribes from a Mailchimp campaign or automation in the future, we'll sync the opt-out status back to Shopify and vice versa. If you're concerned that the store subscribers won't match up with Mailchimp, we recommend comparing customers from your store with Mailchimp unsubscribe data. You could then manually unsubscribe customers in Shopify. Another option would be to send out a light email after the sync - maybe something to the effect of "We're updating our customer preferences, click here to opt-out". We're very sorry for any inconvenience.

After further investigation into this issue, we've found that the app store had an unusual redirect method to our installation page that needed to be corrected. This problem appeared for a small subset of users, but we understand how frustrating this behavior can be if you were one of them. We've worked with Shopify to resolve this problem and it should be fixed now. Would you care to update your review if you're able to connect and use ShopSync?

Hi there, if you installed the ShopSync app prior to 4/4/19, our app was engineered to include past customers who "Accept email marketing", orders, and products in Shopify. If they showed unsubscribed in Shopify, we ignored the email. In other words, we looked at Shopify as the "truth" and nothing else. Although our intentions for this were done for all the right reasons, it, unfortunately, didn't work for everyone as you saw with your subscriber counts going up. With how we used to perform the initial sync, it would have been possible to re-subscribe users if they had opted out from a Mailchimp list previously. Or, it's also possible the old integration missed real subscribers with how it was designed. Now, we've changed up how we handle the data from Shopify to Mailchimp on the initial sync. Here's more information on how it works: Before any data is processed by ShopSync, we perform integrity checks with Mailchimp to ensure these customers can be sent to the list that is connected. For example, if someone opted out of a list in the past, we won't add the email again. We'll also update Shopify with the correct status that Mailchimp shows. That way, the most current subscriber status in Mailchimp is synced with the store. After the initial sync is complete, we'll continue adding customers, orders, and products from your store to Mailchimp as transactions occur. We'll add customers that visit your store who are deemed transactional as well. That way, you can use Mailchimp's automations to trigger abandoned carts and order notifications. If someone unsubscribes from a Mailchimp campaign or automation in the future, we'll sync the opt-out status back to Shopify and vice versa. If you're concerned that the store subscribers won't match up with Mailchimp, we recommend comparing customers from your store with Mailchimp unsubscribe data. You could then manually unsubscribe customers in Shopify. Another option would be to send out a light email after the sync - maybe something to the effect of "We're updating our customer preferences, click here to opt-out". We're very sorry for any inconvenience.

Hi there, we're very sorry to hear you're having issues installing ShopSync. We’ve had other users reporting this problem, and after an initial investigation, our best guess is that it's something related to the browser session inside of the app store. We're still doing some checks and balances on our end to be sure, but the redirects after install look perfect; we're also seeing hundreds of successful installs each hour. Due to recent events, ShopSync has become a popular app, and we're wondering if something may be going on at a low level with DNS or caching inside the app store. We've also reached out to Shopify, and they have asked that we post something in their API forums for further review. We're not sure how long it will take an engineer on their side to look at things. As a workaround, we've heard from several users that ShopSync can be installed by going to the apps listing page in Shopify. Evidently, after the first error appears, it will then appear on the listing page (just not fully installed). From there, you should be able to go through the install process business as usual. Other users have reported that by changing browsers, it resolved the issue as well. If you're open to trying the install again, please feel free to do so. Also, don't hesitate to drop a note to [email protected] if you need further assistance. Update: After further investigation into this issue, we've found that the app store had an unusual redirect method to our installation page that needed to be corrected. This problem appeared for a small subset of users, but we understand how frustrating this behavior can be if you were one of them. We've worked with Shopify to resolve this problem and it should be fixed now.

Hi Anja Dance, we're sorry to hear that, but thank you for bringing things to our attention. We've been testing on our end and so far we're unable to replicate that type of behavior. With that said, we're wondering if maybe Mailchimp was having an issue at the time your orders were going through. We definitely want to help you get this resolved. Would you care to email us your Mailchimp user ID to [email protected] so we can troubleshoot further? From there, we can dig deeper into the Mailchimp API to see what events triggered and where they came from. We look forward to hearing from you.

Hi Rosary Habit, thank you for the feedback. We wanted to let you know that we examined the store's submissions to Mailchimp and we're seeing some compliance-related errors coming from their API. Since we don't store data on our servers, we're unable to see the emails related to these errors. With that said, resyncing from time to time may be exacerbating the problem and we recommend reaching out to Mailchimp's support team right away to inquire why some emails aren't making it over. Otherwise, customer data will sync over as advertised using the ShopSync app if Mailchimp allows it.

Hi Bakedin, we're sorry to hear you experienced this type of behavior. As noted in the other review you had mentioned, we're curious as to how this could be happening with how the system is engineered. Our system is designed to not send automations during the sync process. We've been unable to replicate this in our testing environments, and we've had thousands of successful installs with no issue. Rest assured, we want to get to the bottom of things for you. Would you care to reach out to [email protected]? We'd like to understand if you had any other Mailchimp apps installed and what automations retriggered. Once we have that information we can make calls to the Mailchimp API to see events that took place under the hood - possibly even pinpointing the source of the retrigger.

Hi Black Seed Co., thank you for the feedback. We’ve tested this scenario extensively and we are unable to replicate the behavior being described. To give you and others an understanding of how the initial sync works, on install, we tell the Mailchimp API specifically to not send automation messages. When the sync is done, it is designed to pick up where events left off for transactional messages only (like abandoned carts, order notifications ). For marketing related emails like win backs, first-time buyers, etc. (and pop-ups), there is not a technical way to fuse these back together due to limitations in the Mailchimp infrastructure. In other words, there's no way to associate the unique store ID that ShopSync is using with any existing Mailchimp automation(s). Reason being, if you were using the previous Mailchimp app, it has its own unique store ID assigned to those automations. In other words, the key to door locks have to match and ShopSync doesn't have those keys. Our best guess is that there may have been something going on either with Mailchimp at the time, or perhaps another app kicking off events in your store. But, we take any and all feedback seriously and we'd like to work with you on further investigation of what may have happened. We sent a direct message to you earlier, if you don't mind to share your store URL and Mailchimp user ID that would be a good start for us. We'll be happy to dig deeper to see what could've happened here.