Changes are queued within about 2 minutes and pushed to Mailchimp every 80 seconds.
| Group | Source | Contacts |
|---|---|---|
| Policy updates | Saved query | 6,840 |
| Newsletter | Saved query | 11,920 |
| Conference 2026 registered | Event registrations | 1,212 |
| Conference 2026 not registered | Saved query | 4,317 |
Hi David,
Early-bird pricing for the Annual Conference closes this Friday. Register your team now to lock in the lower rate.
The member record stays the source of truth, including for who has said no.
He registers a delegate in the member database
A member organisation phones in a registration for one of its staff. Ben enters it in the member database as he always has. He does nothing in Mailchimp. The member record is the only place the change is made.
Mailchimp is updated two minutes later
The change goes on a queue. A service picks it up and creates or updates the Mailchimp subscriber: name, organisation, state, member type, job function. The registration lands as an event tag, so Sarah drops out of any “not yet registered” send.
Every change in the member database is queued rather than sent straight away, so a busy morning of registrations or a Mailchimp outage doesn’t lose anything. The service works through the queue in order.
Her audience is already a Mailchimp group
On Monday afternoon Rachel saved a query in the member database, “Conference 2026 not registered”, in the Mailchimp folder. Overnight it became a group in Mailchimp with the same name. She builds the campaign on it. No export, no file, no upload.
He unsubscribes from event emails
David works at a member organisation and doesn’t run their conference attendance any more. He clicks unsubscribe at the bottom of Rachel’s email.
The unsubscribe is written back to the member record
Mailchimp tells the system about the unsubscribe straight away. About a minute later David’s member record shows it, and the next overnight sync leaves him out of every event group. Hard bounces come back the same way.
Member services see the same answer
David’s manager calls to ask why he stopped getting conference emails. Ben opens David’s member record and the answer is there, with the date. Nobody has to log in to Mailchimp to find out.