Zendra’s Mailchimp integration keeps your Mailchimp audience current with your membership program. Zendra tags each member by plan, writes their membership status and key dates to merge fields, and sends an event when a membership changes, so your segments, campaigns, and automation flows work from current membership data.

Mailchimp is available on every Zendra plan, including Free. Your store needs preview access before you can connect. You connect through OAuth from the Zendra admin, choose one Mailchimp audience, and choose which plans sync.

Zendra doesn’t change the subscription status of contacts already in your audience. Members who aren’t in the audience yet are added as subscribed, so make sure your membership signup tells people they’ll receive email from you.

When you’d use this

• Send member news, perk reminders, and renewal notices only to people with active access.
• Tailor campaigns by plan, like a different message for each tier.
• Start automation flows when a membership starts, renews, pauses, or ends.

What Zendra sends to Mailchimp

Tags and merge fields describe each member right now, and events record the moment something changed.

Tags

Every member with active access gets the zendra-member tag, plus a zendra-plan-{plan} tag for each plan they hold (for example, zendra-plan-founder-circle). Active, trialing, and cancelled-but-not-yet-ended memberships all count as access. Zendra removes the tags when access ends or a membership is paused.

Merge fields

Zendra adds four merge fields to your audience and keeps them current on each member’s contact:

Merge tag	Field name	What it holds
MEMSTATUS	Zendra Membership Status	The member’s current status: active, trialing, ending, billing_failed, paused, cancelled, expired, or never
MEMSINCE	Zendra Member Since	The earliest start date among the member’s synced memberships, recorded the first time Zendra syncs them
MEMRENEW	Zendra Next Renewal	The next renewal date for a membership that will renew
MEMENDS	Zendra Access Ends	When access ends for a membership that won’t renew

ending means the member has cancelled but still has access through the end of their paid period. never means the contact has no memberships left in your sync scope.

A Mailchimp contact holds one set of merge fields. When a member has more than one membership, MEMSTATUS shows their strongest current status (an active membership outranks a trial, and a trial outranks a cancelled one), and MEMRENEW and MEMENDS show whichever date comes first.

Lifecycle events

Zendra sends an event to the member’s contact when a membership:

• Starts, whether paid or in a free trial (zendra_membership_started)
• Begins a trial (zendra_trial_started), converts from a trial to paid (zendra_trial_converted), or ends a trial without converting (zendra_trial_expired)
• Starts a subscription (zendra_subscription_started)
• Renews (zendra_renewal_processed), or fails a billing attempt (zendra_billing_failure)
• Changes plan (zendra_plan_changed)
• Pauses (zendra_membership_paused) or reactivates (zendra_membership_reactivated)
• Is cancelled (zendra_membership_cancelled), ends (zendra_membership_ended), or expires (zendra_membership_expired)

Each event includes the plan it’s about. A few timing details matter when you build flows:

• Cancelled fires when the member cancels, while they still have access. Ended fires when that paid-through access runs out, and Expired fires when a fixed-length membership reaches its end date.
• A free trial sends zendra_membership_started and zendra_trial_started when it begins, and zendra_trial_converted on its first successful charge. To welcome only paying members, start your flow from zendra_trial_converted for trials, and in flows that start from zendra_membership_started, check that MEMSTATUS isn’t trialing. (The zendra-member tag is added when a trial starts, so it fires at the start of the trial too.)
• Zendra updates the contact’s tags and merge fields before it sends the event, so a flow that starts from the event sees current data.

You can start an automation flow (previously Customer Journeys) from a Zendra event on Mailchimp’s Essentials plan, which supports single-step flows. Multi-step flows need Mailchimp’s Standard plan or higher.

Connect Mailchimp

1. In Zendra, go to Settings » Integrations.
2. Find Mailchimp and click Connect Mailchimp.
3. You’ll be redirected to Mailchimp to authorize the connection. Approve it, and you’re returned to Zendra.
4. Under Sync settings, choose your Audience.
5. Choose Sync all plans or Sync selected plans, and pick the plans if you’re syncing only some.
6. Optionally enable Create Mailchimp segments, then save your settings.

Choose the audience carefully, because it can’t be changed after the first save. To sync a different audience, you’ll need to connect a different Mailchimp account.

Once your settings are saved, Zendra runs a first sync of your current members. The first sync sets up tags and merge fields for current state only. It doesn’t replay historical lifecycle events, so connecting won’t send old membership changes into your live flows.

Sync settings

• Audience: the one Mailchimp audience Zendra syncs to. It’s locked after the first save.
• Plans: control which membership plans sync. Syncing everything is the simplest starting point, but you can select specific plans if some programs shouldn’t reach your marketing audience. After you change which plans sync, click Sync now to bring Mailchimp up to date.
• Create Mailchimp segments: let Zendra create four segments that stay current as statuses change:
  • Zendra — Active members: status is active, trialing, or ending
  • Zendra — Trial members: status is trialing
  • Zendra — At risk: status is billing failed
  • Zendra — Cancelled members: status is cancelled or expired

Paused members lose their tags and aren’t in any of these segments until they reactivate.

The Sync status card shows the latest result, plus how many members were processed, updated, excluded, and failed. Completed with errors means the sync finished but some members failed, and Failed means the sync stopped before finishing. Review the displayed error before trying Sync now again, and wait for an active sync to finish before starting another. Zendra also checks the sync every night.

To check a sync, open a known member’s contact in Mailchimp and compare their tags and merge fields with Zendra.

Switching to selected plans doesn’t automatically clean up members you’ve taken out of scope. Use Remove out-of-scope records only when you want Zendra’s tags and merge values removed from those contacts. It permanently clears them and can’t be undone, but it never deletes the contacts themselves.

Using membership data in Mailchimp

• Campaigns: send to a Zendra segment or a plan tag, like a perk announcement for zendra-plan-founder-circle only.
• Segments: combine Zendra’s tags and fields with Mailchimp’s own conditions, like active members who joined before a certain date.
• Automation flows: start a flow from a Zendra event, like a check-in when a membership pauses, or a win-back flow when access ends. Mailchimp can also start a flow when a tag is added or an audience field changes, which works well with Zendra’s plan tags and MEMSTATUS.
• Personalization: use merge tags in your email content, such as *|MEMRENEW|* for the next renewal date.

Disconnect Mailchimp

On the integration page, click Disconnect, then confirm. Membership syncing stops until you reconnect, and changes made while you’re disconnected don’t send events. The contacts, tags, merge values, segments, and flows already in Mailchimp stay there, and Zendra keeps your sync settings.

Mailchimp doesn’t let apps revoke their own access. To remove Zendra’s access completely, also remove Zendra from your Mailchimp account’s connected apps.

Common issues

• You see a coming soon page instead of connection settings. Preview access is enabled per store. Contact our team to confirm access for the Shopify store you’re using.
• A member isn’t tagged in Mailchimp. Check that their plan is in your sync scope and that their membership currently grants access. Members without an email address and pending memberships (like a gift that hasn’t been claimed yet) don’t sync; they’re counted as Excluded on the Sync status card. If you recently changed which plans sync, click Sync now.
• Mailchimp tag names have changed. If a Zendra tag is renamed in Mailchimp, Zendra shows a banner on the integration page. Click Restore to put the original name back, so tag syncing and any segments you built on those tags keep working.
• The integration shows a connection error. Mailchimp access doesn’t expire on its own, so an error usually means Zendra was removed from Mailchimp’s connected apps. Click Reconnect Mailchimp to restore syncing.
• A flow doesn’t start from a Zendra event. Event-triggered flows need Mailchimp’s Essentials plan for single-step flows, or Standard or higher for multi-step flows. Check your Mailchimp plan and the flow’s trigger.
• A merge field wasn’t created. If your audience has reached Mailchimp’s merge field limit, the sync reports an error. Remove an unused field in Mailchimp, then click Sync now. If your audience already has a field with one of Zendra’s merge tags but a different type, Zendra leaves it untouched.
• Historical events are missing. This is by design: the first sync sets up current state without replaying past lifecycle events.

FAQ

Can one customer have multiple memberships?

Yes. They get a tag for each active plan, and their merge fields summarize all of their synced memberships: the strongest current status and the earliest upcoming renewal or access end date.

Can I sync to more than one audience?

No. Each connection syncs to one audience, and the audience can’t be changed after the first save.

Do I still need Zendra’s email notifications?

They do different jobs. Zendra’s notifications are transactional records of lifecycle changes like renewals, payment failures, and expirations, while Mailchimp carries your marketing. If you move a message like the renewal reminder into a Mailchimp flow, disable that template in Zendra so members don’t hear it twice.

Keep learning

• Shopify Flow (automate membership operations inside Shopify from the same lifecycle)
• Email notifications (Zendra’s transactional lifecycle emails)
• Membership lifecycle & billing recovery (the lifecycle behind the events)
• Managing members