MailChimp: Why aren't submissions always sent to the list?

hi - we have a form called "Rock Strong Marriages Registration Form" that uses the MailChimp integration. for the integration settings i have chosen these options:

Send Contacts To Mail Chimp: Always

Update Existing Contact - checked

Send Opt-In Email - not checked

i tend to define the word "always" as "every single time no matter what" (especially since i don't have "send opt-in email" checked), but as best as i can tell you only send across their info if the check the box on the form saying they want to subscribe to the list.

can you please clarify how you define the word "always"?

(and yes - i know you shouldn't send emails to people that haven't opted in, but in my case i'm using MailChimp to email people who have registered for the conference so they know when to arrive, etc. but then i'll only send non-event emails to those that have opted into a specific interest group.)

Apologies for the inconveniences this may have caused to you. 

I have checked this form from your account http://www.jotform.us/form/72266811239155, cloned it and set  it up the same way on my end. As far as I can tell, the submissions are being sent to the MailChimp list, the only reason why I did not receive a submission was due to the same email address or name used in the submission, that to avoid duplication. 

The option "Send Contacts To Mail Chimp" works on the following way: 

1. If "Always" is selected, the record will be sent to MailChimp without user's agreement. 

2. If "Only if user agrees" is selected, user will have to mark a check box on the form to be added to the MailChimp list. 

Now, regarding the "Update Existing Contact" option, if it's checked and your user submits an existing email or name in the list, the record will be updated, for example, may be that the email address is already in your MailChimp list, but the name is different, the integration will search on your existing records and will update that record with the same email address. 

If the "Update Existing Contact" is not checked, then when there is duplicated information, the record will not be sent to the MailChimp list. 

Basically, the email address seems to be the key for the MailChimp record, if the email address exists in the list then the record will be updated if "Update Existing Contact" is checked (otherwise it will not be added), and if the email does not exist,  a new record will be added. 

Would you like to have all the records sent to your list no matter if they already exists?

Please let us know.  

OK - so the way you're describing things is exactly how i thought they should work, but we recently had someone use the form and their email was NOT added to our MailChimp list. (and no - they weren't already on the list, even in the "unsubscribed" area.) 

can you explain why that could have happened? according to your description and the settings on my form there should never be a time where this happens.

Would be a bit hard to detect what may have caused the issue without replicating it on our end. 

In order to troubleshot the issue may you please do the following: 

1. Try re-integrating your form and generate a new API key, this should clear any existing issue on the current integration. 

This link will help you with the API keys on MailChimp: https://kb.mailchimp.com/integrations/api-integrations/about-api-keys 

2. Please make sure that your integration is set up to update existing contacts and the records are always sent to the list. 

3. Submit your form with a new record, the data should be sent to the integrated list, sometimes MailChimp takes a bit to update the records, you may log out and log in again to see the new records on your list. 

If the issue still persists, please let us know. 

to "re-integrate" my form, doesn't that mean i'd have to remove the integration and then add it again with the new API key? if so, doesn't that mean that it would lose the MailChimp-related data for all the submissions i've already received? i don't see any other way to change an API key except to remove the integration and (i assume) lose that data.

It is always recommended that you back up your data from JotForm or from MailChimp. In this way, if something happens, you can just import them back.

If you re-integrate MailChimp, the form submissions in JotForm will not be affected. The process is that when the user submits the form, the data will be sent to our servers first. After that, it will be forwarded to the integration. It means that the form submissions are stored on our servers unless you delete it or you delete the form field in the Form Builder.

Related guides:
How-to-Export-Form-Data-to-Excel
New-Data-Export-Tool-Export-Your-Data-From-All-Forms
Export and Back Up Account Data [MailChimp]

Hope that helps. Thank you.