Audience
Every CSA buyer joins your newsletter list on their own.
The person who bought a share in April never got the June newsletter, because their email is on a paper slip in the truck. Your list is your most direct line to the people who already pay you, and it grows only as fast as your data entry does. Which, in season, is not at all.
Farms that keep their buyers close sell out earlier and weather bad seasons better. That is not marketing theory, it is the arithmetic of repeat customers. The list has to build itself, or it will not get built.
How it actually works
FarmHub syncs buyers into Mailchimp. When a sale with a buyer email lands in FarmHub, that buyer joins the Mailchimp audience you chose.
- Purchases drive the sync. A sales record with a buyer email upserts that buyer into your configured Mailchimp audience. Event-driven, so the list grows as the sales happen, not when someone finds time to export a CSV.
- You pick the audience. At setup FarmHub reads your Mailchimp audiences and you choose which one CSA buyers sync into. Nothing touches your other lists.
- Unsubscribes come back the other way. Mailchimp unsubscribe and cleaned-address webhooks flow into FarmHub, which suppresses the contact. FarmHub will never push a suppressed contact back onto your list. That is a CAN-SPAM and GDPR line we treat as hard.
- Contacts survive email changes. FarmHub keys contacts on Mailchimp’s stable contact id, not on the email address. When a buyer changes their email, the mapping holds instead of orphaning or duplicating the contact.
The result is a list that mirrors your actual customer base, kept current by the sales themselves.
WHAT YOU CAN COUNT ON
What you can count on
What is actually built:
- OAuth2 through Mailchimp’s login. You authorize on Mailchimp’s own screen. Credentials are stored encrypted per connection. FarmHub never has your Mailchimp password.
- Idempotent upserts. A repeat buyer is one contact, updated, not a new duplicate per purchase.
- Suppression is permanent. Unsubscribed and cleaned contacts are marked suppressed in FarmHub and are never re-added by the sync, no matter how many times they buy again.
- Retries, kill switch, audit trail. Failed syncs retry with backoff. You can disable the connection instantly, and sync activity is recorded in hash-chained audit rows.
What we do not do
What we stay out of:
- FarmHub does not send email. Mailchimp remains your newsletter tool; FarmHub feeds it the audience.
- FarmHub does not import your Mailchimp list into the farm record. The contact flow is outbound, plus inbound suppression signals.
- FarmHub does not segment, tag, or design campaigns. That craft stays yours, in Mailchimp.
Setup, honestly
You need a Mailchimp account with at least one audience.
- In FarmHub, open Integrations and choose Mailchimp.
- Sign in through Mailchimp’s OAuth screen.
- Pick the audience your buyers should sync into.
- Record a sale with a buyer email and confirm the contact appears in that audience.
Questions farmers ask
When does a buyer get added to my Mailchimp audience?
When a sales record with a buyer email is created in FarmHub. The sync is event-driven and upserts the buyer into the one audience you configured.
What happens when someone unsubscribes?
Mailchimp notifies FarmHub by webhook, and FarmHub suppresses the contact permanently. A suppressed contact is never pushed back to your list, even if they keep buying from you.
Will repeat purchases create duplicate contacts?
No. The sync is idempotent and keyed on Mailchimp’s stable contact id, so a repeat buyer stays one contact even across email address changes.
Can FarmHub email my customers directly?
No. FarmHub syncs the audience. Composing and sending newsletters stays in Mailchimp.
Which of my Mailchimp audiences does FarmHub touch?
Only the one you select at setup. FarmHub reads your list of audiences so you can choose, and syncs contacts into that audience alone.
READY FOR THE NEXT SHIFT
Let the list build itself
Connect Mailchimp and every buyer with an email joins your newsletter audience automatically, with unsubscribes honored for good. The paper slips can stay in the truck.
Start free