Mailchimp new subscribers module not triggering

How To
1

Hi,

I’m trying to auto-trigger a scenario when a new subscriber is added to a Mailchimp list. But it never seems to fire.

I’ve set it to trigger ‘on demand’. So I’m assuming what should happen is when someone subscribes to my Mailchimp list and is ‘subscribed’ then this scenario should run.

I do have double-opt in on my mailchimp list. So..

  1. the user subscribes to the Mailchimp list using my Mailchimp Landing Page
  2. User gets added to the Mailchimp list with a status of ‘pending’
  3. They then get a 2nd ‘are you sure’ opt in email, and clicks the ‘subscribe me’ link
  4. The status changes to ‘Subscribed’ in Mailchimp.

Any ideas why the scenario is not triggering?

image
image1122×1554 161 KB

2

Welcome to the Make community!

Polling Triggers & Empty “Check Runs”

This is because the module is a POLLING trigger, and not an INSTANT (Webhook) trigger.

If you don’t see any bundles from the trigger module and operations on the rest of the modules, it means there are no new responses (empty output bundle) when the scenario ran to check for new items. This is called a “Check run”.

There are two main types of triggers, Polling (scheduled), and Instant (webhooks). Polling triggers can only run on a schedule. Instant triggers can be run as soon as data is received by the webhook.

  • Polling means Make checks external service for changes (pull changes to Make).
  • Webhook (instant) triggers means external service calls Make when there are new changes (push changes to Make).

The module you are using does not push changes — it’s basically a API request that Make has to occasionally “call” to fetch the latest changes/items.

To find out more on the different types of Trigger modules, see refer to Types of Modules and Webhooks sections of the Make Help Centre.

If you want your scenario to only run when there is new data (and not on a schedule or timed interval), see if your app has an “Instant” or “Webhook” trigger in Make. If not, check if the third-party service has a feature that can send out a webhook when content is created/updated - and then you can point it to a “Custom Webhook” trigger in your scenario.

If you want to re-run your scenario on older data,

Polling Triggers: Epoch Panel & Selecting Older Data

Go to the Epoch Panel, by right-clicking on the trigger module (polling triggers only), and select “Choose where to start” from the list of options in the context menu.

260×187 11.7 KB

If you select “From now on”, the next time the scenario runs it will only return new data (or nothing if there is no new data).

450×247 13 KB

You can also select other old data to re-run your scenario with next using the “Choose manually” option. This will then show you a list of previous historical items you can select to process the next time the scenario is triggered.

For more information, see

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues. P.S.: investing some effort into the tutorials in the Make Academy will save you lots of time and frustration using Make!

— @samliew

3

ah, thanks for that @samliew I got a little confused with the name, as it was called ‘watch subscribers’ so I made the assumption it was actually watching mailchimp and triggered on demand - serves me right for assuming!

I’ve just tried a dummy registration then running the scenario once manually, and yes that worked fine!

I think i got a bit confused as I couldn’t run manually when the scenario is in ‘on demand’ as it just says ‘scenario is already running’. Have to turn it off first of course! One to watch out for.

I’ll have a dig around mailchimp to see if there is a webhook that can be fired from there.

4

So if I poll say, every 15 mins does that cost me in Make operations? Or only if there is data to pull?

5

Actually, I’ve now found the way to use a webhook from Mailchimp instead of the Watch Subscribers module. Just have to configure the webhook under the audience settings. Then I can use the Custom Webhook module in Make to receive that Mailchimp subscribe webhook.

https://mailchimp.com/developer/marketing/guides/sync-audience-data-webhooks

Nice thing is that Mailchimp provide the JSON of the data it sends, and you can paste that straight into the data structure of the custom webhook module - really like that.

{
“type”: “subscribe”,
“fired_at”: “2009-03-26 21:35:57”,
“data”: {
“id”: “8a25ff1d98”,
“list_id”: “a6b5da1054”,
“email”: “api@mailchimp.com”,
“email_type”: “html”,
“ip_opt”: “10.20.10.30”,
“ip_signup”: “10.20.10.30”,
“merges”: {
“EMAIL”: “api@mailchimp.com”,
“FNAME”: “Mailchimp”,
“LNAME”: “API”,
“INTERESTS”: “Group1,Group2”
}
}
}

I also had some of my own MERGE Fields in Mailchimp, but could easily edit the data structure to include them. the standard data structure just has the default merge tags for Mailchimp (ie, EMAIL, FNAME, LNAME, iNTERESTS).

1 Like
6

Yes, explained here Operations - Help Center

For more information, please refer to these courses in the Make Academy:

Introduction to Operations

  • Introduction to operations and operations counting
  • Check runs of scheduled scenarios
  • Subscriptions

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any further questions or issues. P.S.: investing some effort into the tutorials in the Make Academy will save you lots of time and frustration using Make!

— @samliew