Adding attendees for an Eventbrite event to a MailChimp mailing list

Learn how easy it is to use App Connect to connect Eventbrite to MailChimp so that every time someone signs up to your event in Eventbrite, the attendee is added automatically to a mailing list in MailChimp.

First, find or create everything you need:

An App Connect subscription.
The user names and passwords for your Eventbrite and MailChimp accounts (if you haven't already connected App Connect to your accounts). You can connect to your accounts now on the Applications tab on the Catalog page, or you can connect as you add each application to your flow.
An event in Eventbrite (you can create a private event with free tickets for test purposes).
A mailing list in MailChimp (again, you can create a list for test purposes). Give the mailing list a name that corresponds with the Eventbrite event.
If you want a bit more information before you start, you can read more about how to use App Connect with these apps on the following pages:
- How to use IBM App Connect with Eventbrite
- How to use IBM App Connect with MailChimp

Next, create your flow:

Using the IBM App Connect Designer authoring experience, you can create your flow from a template, or from scratch if you want to explore the steps taken to create a flow.

Creating the flow from a template

This enables you to create the flow immediately, and then select each node in the flow to validate the node and select the application accounts that you want to use. Search for the template name in your IBM App Connect / Templates view.

Restriction: Some templates are only available in App Connect on IBM Cloud

Template name: "Add new Eventbrite attendees to MailChimp lists"

Note: The template is for the extended example with two Eventbrite events and a different MailChimp mailing list for each event (described later, after the initial steps to be completed).

To continue with the template, see the template instructions in Github (opens in a new window)

After creating a flow from the template, you can continue to test your flow.

Creating the flow from scratch

This enables you to explore the steps taken to create the flow from scratch, like to create the template.

Figure 2. Extended flow as illustrated by the template

Complete the following steps in App Connect Designer. (App Connect automatically saves your changes as you go. If you move away from the flow at any point, the flow is saved as a draft flow that you can come back to later.)
1. From the Dashboard, click New > Event-driven flow.
2. Enter a name that identifies the purpose of your flow, for example: Add subscriber for new attendee.
3. Select Eventbrite as your first application (source), then select New attendee as the Eventbrite event that'll trigger the action in MailChimp.
4. If you haven't already connected to your Eventbrite account, click Connect and follow the instructions to allow App Connect to access your Eventbrite account.
5. Select MailChimp as your second application (target), then select Add member to list as the MailChimp action.
6. If you haven't already connected to your MailChimp account, click Connect to connect now.
7. Select the MailChimp list that you want to add subscribers to.
8. Map the Mailchimp / Email address field to the Eventbrite / Email field; for example: click inside the Email Address field, then type em, and then select Email from the list.
  Figure 3. Map Eventbrite fields to MailChimp
  
  (Click image to view full size.)
9. From the banner, open the options menu [⋮], then click Start flow. Click Dashboard to exit the flow. You can now see the flow on your Dashboard; as long as it says "Running", it's listening for your event – someone new signing up for your event in Eventbrite.

Extending the flow:

In the following example, we'll extend the preceding flow to use two Eventbrite events, with a different MailChimp mailing list for each event (as illustrated by the template).

1. Create another test event in Eventbrite.
2. Create another test mailing list in MailChimp and give it a name that corresponds with the new Eventbrite event.
3. On the App Connect dashboard, stop your Eventbrite to MailChimp flow, then edit it.
4. We want to add some conditional logic to the flow between the two applications, so click the plus (+) icon between the two applications.
5. On the Toolbox tab, select If (conditional). An If node is added to your flow, and the If dialog box opens. By default, the If node has one "if" branch, and one "else" branch: if this condition matches, do this; else, do that.
6. In the If dialog box, configure the if branch by selecting the Eventbrite Event ID field in the first box, then entering the ID of the Eventbrite event that you created earlier in the second field.
  Tip:
  - Make sure that you select the Event ID field, not the ID field. You might need to scroll to the bottom of the list of fields to find it.
  - You can find the ID of your Eventbrite event in the URL of the event; for more details, see How to find your event ID.
7. Drag the MailChimp action that you created earlier from the flow onto the if branch of the If node. So if someone signs up to the event with the given event ID, they'll be added to your original mailing list.
  Figure 4. Mailchimp action dragged onto the first condition of the If node
  
  (Click image to view full size.)
8. We want to add people to a different mailing list for the second event, so in the If dialog box, click Add else if.
9. This time, map the Eventbrite Event ID field to the ID of the Eventbrite event that you've just created.
10. Click the plus (+) icon on the else if branch, and add a MailChimp Add member to list action.
11. Select the MailChimp list that you've just created, and map the fields from Eventbrite as you did before.
  Figure 5. People who sign up to different events will be added to different mailing lists
  
  (Click image to view full size.)
12. (Optional) You can add some behaviour to the else branch (if the person is not attending any of the other events). For example, you can select the option for the flow to end, select the error message type 200 (OK), and set the message body to The attendee signed up for a different event (ID: {{$Trigger.event_id}}) (or type the text and select the Eventbrite / Event ID field):
  Figure 6. Else branch of the If node
  
  (Click image to view full size.)
13. From the banner, open the options menu [⋮] and then click Start flow. Click Dashboard to exit the flow, and then check on the Dashboard that your flow is running.

Finally, test your flow:

To test the flow, register for both of your Eventbrite events.

Register for your test event in Eventbrite, providing the required first name, last name, and email address.
Tip: If you use only one mailing list, you'll need to use a different email address to the one that you used to register for the original event that you created at the beginning of this tutorial. If you don't, MailChimp will recognize that someone with that email address is already on the contact list
Log in to your MailChimp account and have a look at your mailing lists. You should see a new subscriber in your list, showing the contact details that you used to sign up for the Eventbrite event.

Conclusion

You've created a flow that automatically adds a subscriber to a MailChimp mailing list every time a new attendee signs up to your Eventbrite event.

This is a simple use of the If node, but you can use it do some pretty powerful stuff. You can add up to 10 If nodes to a flow, you can nest If nodes within an If node, and you can add more 'if' and 'else if' branches. You can also stop processing at the end of a branch, and issue your own message. And you can add more applications after the If node in the flow to process the results of your conditional processing.