Spin Wheel

⌘K
  2. Home
  4. Spin Wheel
  6. Integrations
  8. Mailchimp Integration: Syncing Your Leads

Mailchimp Integration: Syncing Your Leads

Syncing Spin Wheel Leads to Mailchimp

Collecting emails in your WordPress dashboard is only half the job. The Ultimate Spin Wheel Mailchimp integration pushes each new lead straight into a Mailchimp Audience, so a visitor who spins your wheel can drop into a welcome automation while they are still excited about their prize. This guide covers getting your credentials, connecting the plugin, and fixing the common sync errors.

Pro feature: The Mailchimp integration is part of Ultimate Spin Wheel Pro (a separate plugin). In the free plugin the Mailchimp fields appear but stay locked until Pro is active with a valid license. Lead capture, the lead dashboard, and CSV/Excel export all work in the free version — the automatic Mailchimp sync is the Pro addition.

1. Getting Your Credentials

You need two things from Mailchimp: an API Key and an Audience ID.

The API Key

  1. Log in to your Mailchimp account.
  2. Click your profile icon (bottom left) and open Account & billing.
  3. Go to Extras → API keys and click Create A Key.
  4. Name it something you will recognise later, such as “Spin Wheel Plugin”.
  5. Copy the key. It ends with a data-center suffix like -us19 — keep that suffix, because the plugin uses it to reach the correct Mailchimp server.

The Audience ID

  1. Go to Audience → All contacts and select the audience you want to use if you have more than one.
  2. Open Settings → Audience name and defaults.
  3. Copy the Audience ID shown on the right — a short string such as 852abc9123. Mailchimp sometimes calls this the “list ID”.

2. Connecting the Plugin

  1. Go to Spin Wheel → Settings and open the integrations area.
  2. Find the Mailchimp section and switch its Enable toggle on.
  3. Paste your Mailchimp API Key into the Access Key field.
  4. Paste your Audience ID into the Audience ID field.
  5. Save the settings. New leads from that point on are sent to the audience you specified.

Mailchimp is not exclusive — you can keep it enabled alongside other Pro integrations (for example MailPoet or a Zapier webhook) and each enabled destination receives the lead.

3. What Gets Synced

When a visitor submits the form and spins, the plugin records the lead in its own table (wp_wdengage_entries) and then subscribes them to your Mailchimp audience server-side. The prize is shown to the visitor immediately; the Mailchimp call happens in the background and does not delay the wheel. The fields sent are the ones your form actually collects:

  • Email address — the subscriber’s core identifier.
  • Name — captured from the lead form.
  • Phone — only when the phone input field is enabled (the phone field itself is a Pro feature).

Each lead row also stores its own Mailchimp sync result (for example a success status with a “Successfully subscribed” response), so you can confirm from the lead record that the hand-off worked.

4. Troubleshooting Common Errors

“API Key Invalid”

  • Confirm you copied the full key including the data-center suffix (for example -us19).
  • Check that the key has not been revoked and that your Mailchimp account is in good standing.
  • If you regenerated the key in Mailchimp, paste the new one back into the settings and save again.

“Member Exists”

This is not really an error — the person is already on your audience. Mailchimp keeps the existing contact rather than creating a duplicate, so your list count stays clean.

Previously Unsubscribed Contacts

If someone unsubscribed from your audience in the past and later spins the wheel, Mailchimp’s API will refuse to re-add them automatically — that is a Mailchimp compliance rule, not a plugin limitation. The contact has to opt back in through a Mailchimp-hosted form themselves. The lead is still saved in your dashboard, and the failed sync is noted on the lead record.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Mailchimp sync slow down the wheel?

No. The lead is saved and the winner is resolved first, and the subscribe call to Mailchimp runs server-side afterward. The visitor sees their prize right away; the data hand-off happens behind the scenes.

A lead is missing from Mailchimp — where do I look?

Open the lead in the dashboard and check its stored sync result. A failed subscribe (invalid key, a previously unsubscribed contact, or a Mailchimp outage) is recorded there. Fix the underlying cause, and see Debugging Integrations for the full diagnostic checklist.

Can I connect Mailchimp and another service at once?

Yes. Mailchimp can run alongside MailPoet or a Zapier/Pabbly webhook (all Pro). Every enabled integration receives the lead, so you can subscribe to Mailchimp and, say, log to a spreadsheet through Zapier at the same time.

Is exporting still available if I don’t have Pro?

Yes. The free plugin lets you export every captured lead to CSV or Excel from the lead dashboard, which you can then import into Mailchimp by hand. The Pro Mailchimp integration simply removes that manual step by syncing automatically.

Related Documentation

Conclusion

With Ultimate Spin Wheel Pro connected to Mailchimp, every spin can drop a fresh, engaged subscriber straight into your welcome automation — no CSV exports, no manual imports. Add your API Key and Audience ID, enable the toggle, and let each win feed your list. If you need help, visit the wowDevs support center.

How can we help?